"Rite of Passage" ( 5 x 06 )

Sounds like a teenager kind of thing. Or something like that.

Guess I’ll just wait and see, huh?

OH YES IT IS.

You know how I know?

Because the first shot in the episode is a birthday cake that says “Happy Birthday Cassandra” and it has fourteen candles on it. But I think she’s like sixteen now.

We’re at Dr. Fraiser’s house (er, should I just call her Janet in this case? Haha) and Carter has joined them. Cassie is now a thoroughly bratty teenage girl and wants to go out with her boyfriend (or whatever), Dominic.

Out on the porch, he gives her a prism (aww!) and it’s very sweet and all and they go to kiss and awww young love!

…And then the lights explode.

And Cassie collapses.

(Wait, that’s not supposed to happen when you kiss someone! Even if you’re an alien!)

In the infirmary back on base (hey, side note, I just saw the opening credit, and the girl who played Ally in “Bane” is playing Cassie here!), Cassandra’s got a high fever and some sort of retrovirus. However, she starts to regain consciousness, and starts to talk about… forests. And stuff. And the lights flicker again.

At the Hangout, SG-1 (minus Daniel… where is he?), Fraiser, and Hammond discuss what’s going on. Fraiser can’t quite figure out how this virus is spreading, only that it is, and it has the potential to be life threatening. Jackson joins them (there he is!) and says that SG-7, when they had been on her world back during “Singularity”, had witnessed similar symptoms in teenagers there.

(Nirrti, I see you smirking in the background!)

So SG-1 decides to go back to P8X-987 and try to find whatever cured the kids there and bring it back to Cassie.

It’s nighttime when they enter the forest, and they find a glowing handprint on a tree. (Fringe? Oh wait…) When Jackson touches the handprint, a fire springs up, and of course the two closest are… O’Neill and Teal’c.

(Adventure tiiiime!)

They find themselves in some kind of underground laboratory, and shortly thereafter they are joined by Carter and Daniel. The latter thinks that this place certainly must have something to do with the curing of the “mind fever”. O’Neill thinks it unlikely that Nirrti would help any of these kids, but that instead she was conducting some kind of experiment.

Carter brings back a sample from the planet, but Cassie’s situation is worsening. She mouths off terribly to Janet, and I really think this is the illness talking. Oh boy.

She’s been put in quarantine, and there’s seemingly no stopping this virus. Carter and Janet tell her of their Nirrti-experiment-theory, but the truth is, they don’t really know what to do.

Back on 987, O’Neill and Teal’c uncover some kind of device, and there’s a classic moment:

O’Neill: (Holding up the device) “What’s this for?”

Teal’c: “What do you think it is for?”

Uh… awkward, hehe.

Meanwhile, Daniel tries to figure out some more of Nirrti’s handy little notes, and the rings activate… but there’s no one there. (Ooo, spooky!)

…And we get the impression they’re being watched…!

The three guys go back to base, and Carter’s sat down to a game of chess with Cassie. But Cassandra doesn’t seem too optimistic right now.

“I’m changing into something. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

(Now what does that sound like, Miss Ally? …Oh, oops, wrong character.)

…And then she demonstrates what she means. She apparently has telekinesis now. (Whoa, nice.) But Carter reassures her that she doesn’t think anything different of her.

In the Hangout, Jack proves that he really does know something about magnets when he explains just how Cassie can move those pieces around. (Huh, that makes sense. Way to go, Jack! I always knew you were smarter than you let on.) But it gets better. A word Daniel hadn’t known (but Teal’c helped him out here) – hok’tar – really means “Advanced human”.

…So Nirrti wanted to have SUPERHUMANS so she could have a SUPERHOST and be a SUPERGOA’ULD!

Cassie, however, may be the first to actually succeed in this transformation.

Cassandra now tells Janet that she wants this to happen. But Janet tells her daughter she needs to fight this, rather than simply accept it. But will she take her advice?

Personally, I think Carter would be more likely to accept this sort of change than Cassie’s mom… primarily because, well, Janet’s her mom (adoptive mom, whatever) and it’s just maternal instinct to not want anything to befall your kids. Carter, on the other hand, was host to a Tok’ra for a time and I think better understands something like this – having some weird abilities. But we’ll see what happens.

…And some invisible force is typing into the keyboard..!

Speaking of instincts… When Carter joins her, Cassie asks the major why she didn’t leave her back in “Singularity” when the bomb was supposed to go off inside her. She then says that she has the same instinct that everything’s going to be okay with this. And indeed, Carter says she understands, and she’ll be here. (Aww… She’s so sweet!)

…And an invisible something goes into Fraiser’s office…

What the..?

No. No. That can’t be who I think it is.

..Okay, who are the only Goa’uld who can turn invisible?

The creeper, and… Nirrti.

I hate where this is going.

Cassie says that she saw (or rather, felt) a Goa’uld’s presence, and when SG-1 rushes into the infirmary, we find out that Cronus was the one holding her prisoner after “Fair Game”.

Cronus is dead.

Nirrti’s free.

To quote my favourite Colonel, “Aw, crap!”

She’s apprehended in the infirmary, and O’Neill gets her with a zat.

Way to go Jack.

They put her in a holding cell and Nirrti’s willing to play hardball – she’ll save Cassie if they let her go… with her invisibility device… and a sample of Cassandra’s blood.

See, this is why I hate the Goa’uld. They’re always pickin’ on the kids.

Cassie’s condition continues to worsen, and her fever’s up to 106. Ooohh man.

At the Hangout, Jack wants to do the bargain with Nirrti. The way he sees it, it’s just one more Goa’uld – they’ll take her down eventually. Hammond disagrees, and Teal’c… agrees with Hammond.

Hold on a second. I’m having the same reaction as Jack. “What?!”

All right, Teal’c, I know you’ve got the whole logical-needs-of-the-many thing going on here, but that seems just a little bit out-of-character. He goes on to say that just the information Nirrti possesses “would be worth the life of one”.

T, you’re killin’ me here!

Fraiser storms in on Nirrti (ooo, you do NOT mess with Mom!), pulls a gun on her, and… whoa. SG-1 and Hammond come in and the general tells Janet that he’s been convinced: They’ll go through with the deal. When Nirrti says that his word “isn’t enough,” he tells her this:

“Then I should remind you that the woman holding the gun on you is Cassandra’s mother.”

And at last she agrees.

She goes into the infirmary with a healing device (nice we still keep that around) and reluctantly takes care of her part of the bargain. And now we gotta do our thing.

So Nirrti goes out through the ‘Gate, leaving O’Neill a little smirk and a strange sense of foreboding. But we’ve succeeded. Cassie’s fine again, and it’s a happy ending.

How’s that for a birthday?

Final thoughts… Well, we got one more Goa’uld running around. That kind of stinks. But at least Nirrti’s not a total “YOU WILL BE MY FIRST JAFFA” creeper like Hathor. Eeurgh. Thank god she’s dead. But Cassie’s alive and well. That’s good, right?

There are a few problems we run into here, though. Nirrti apparently intends to resume her experimentation on humans, trying to make the hok’tar a reality. There’s still the possibility that she will succeed. And besides, how many victims don’t survive the experiment? At first I wasn’t inclined at all to agree with Teal’c (there’s no guarantee they could get anything out of her, anyways, in which case Cassandra’s death would have been for nothing) but there may have been some merit to his claims. Frankly, though, I don’t think that Janet would have pulled that gun off of Nirrti anytime soon – like I said, you don’t challenge a mom when it comes to her kid! Really a great moment, if not somewhat seemingly out-of-character, for our lovely Doctor Fraiser.

I’m also curious as to how the Tok’ra will react to this… presuming that we tell them, after all. The SGC had a Goa’uld prisoner. I’m pretty sure the Tok’ra won’t be too thrilled to find out that we let her go. It doesn’t seem they hold the same value of an individual life as most of us do… or perhaps they are merely not as influenced by their emotions as we are. Maybe the whole attachment thing is kind of Tau’ri.

In any case, it was neat to see Cassie again (still laughing over the fact that she was played by the same girl who played Ally – oh, the irony) and especially to see her interactions with Janet. Sadly I believe this is her last appearance in the series, but I always wished they’d given Cassandra at least a cameo here or there, being Janet’s adoptive daughter and all. I dunno. Just a thought.

I guess that’s why we have fan-fiction!

PREDICTION/REFLECTION THINGY

(Anyone notice I’m starting to use first names more often?)

Sam: Uh, yeah, it’s kind of weird. Except for me.

Daniel: I agree, it’s weird. Especially when you say, “Jack and Jackson”… “Jack and Daniel” just has a better ring to it.

Jack: But when you put me in the same sentence as Teal’c it’s usually “O’Neill”.

Teal’c: Perhaps that is because that is what I call you.

Jack: Well, your name’s never changed.

Sam: Uh, sir, I think in the first blog she wrote she frequently referred to him as “the snakeheaded alien” or something.

Daniel: Yeah, and she also misspelled “Jaffa” as “Jaffra” and it looks like the word she used was “snakehead-suited-aliens”. And she capitalized the “C” in Teal’c’s name.

Jack: Didn’t she say she was an English major?

Teal’c: I believe she did, O’Neill.

Marie: WILL YOU GUYS LAY OFF?!