"A Matter of Time" ( 2 x 16 )

My guess is this will have something to do with time, or time travel, or some weird thing like that.

SLINGSHOT AROUND THE SUUUUUUN!

…No.

We open up… in space? We’re looking at a sun that looks like it’s about to go supernova, and then a pulse flashes, and… we’re on a planet again. There’s an SGC team running in relatively slow motion, and they’re slowing down as they get closer to the DHD. It could be cool but my impression is that it’s kind of corny. The leader’s last expression is one of shock and fear.

Back on base (hi guys!) Carter and O’Neill are talking about wormholes. That’s a clue that we’ll probably be talking about wormholes throughout this episode, as in, how they relate to the Stargate.

A klaxon blares as someone tries to dial in. Jackson, we find out, is on a mission with SG-6 on PX3-808. There’s a low-pitched pulse coming through, but if they make it six times faster, it plays out as SG-10’s code, coming in very, very slowly.

They open up the iris, but nothing comes through.

Oh no!

They send a probe through, but it can’t even send them back decent video. It seems to be recording so slowly they’re only getting a millisecond of a frame at a time. What comes out is the horrified faces of SG-10, and when they pan up they see…

…a black hole!

What I find crazy is that they can see the black hole from the surface. I suppose that it’s sci-fi so they can take liberties, but I don’t even understand physics that well. Carter has a lot of lines, but frankly, I don’t understand anything she’s saying. (Yay, technobabble!)

Basically all we need to know is that Major Boyd and SG-10 is going to get ripped apart if they can’t get out of there. Also, time paradoxes and stuff.

They try to shut down the ‘Gate, but it won’t go. Carter figures out that they’re experiencing a paradox  which is keeping the Stargate open longer than it should, somehow affected by the black hole. They then try to shut down all the power in the control room, but it doesn’t work. It creates a lot of sparks and electrical damage, and zaps Teal’c and the man O’Neill was working with… and the Stargate’s still running on power from the black hole. What’s worse, the ‘Gate is starting to act like a black hole in itself. They shut the iris, but I don’t know how long that’s going to work.

Meanwhile, outside forces come in because apparently they’ve lost contact with SGC. Hammond goes up top and finds out that the Air Force believes that the facility had been attacked. He goes to see the president in D.C. to try and figure this mess out. What’s been ten minutes for SGC has been hours for everyone else.

Time dilation, indeed.

The man O’Neill was working with is badly burned, and Teal’c has a couple scars (and his shirt off… hee) but he’s okay. The situation’s getting worse. Jack goes up to meet the Air Force guys, and one of them is Cromwell, a guy O’Neill apparently has issues with. He’s a bit of an idiot when it comes to science and O’Neill doesn’t have a lot of respect for him. The Stargate is still expanding beyond the iris and the time dilation’s getting worse.

Hammond returns from Washington with the idea that they have to auto-destruct the base in order to destroy the Stargate and thus the wormhole, but Carter doesn’t believe that’ll work. O’Neill and Cromwell  stay behind while everyone else evacuates.

Carter works on trying to solve this mess up top and Teal’c keeps her company. (He’s such a nice guy.) He offers to help her out in any way he can, and she simply tells him that they can’t figure this out, primarily because they don’t even know what’s going on. This goes against everything that should happen. But I know she’s going to figure this out, because she’s Carter, and she has weird feelings.

And she does figure it out! The next morning!

She figures that they can redirect the blast/effects of the black hole through the Nellis Stargate. But first, they’ve got to stop Cromwell and O’Neill from blowing the place to bits.

In the control room, we find out the reason for the schism between Cromwell and O’Neill. Cromwell had made a judgment call on a mission to save the rest of the team and O’Neill ended up in an Iraqi prison for four months.

The gravity waves are getting worse, but just in time, Carter shows up with some others. Teal’c delivers the warhead they’re going to send through, and O’Neill and Cromwell very carefully feed it towards the ‘Gate. The iris gets sucked in, and Cromwell’s role snaps, but O’Neill catches him… but he’s sucked away in the end. (Oh man.) O’Neill manages to arm the bomb, and Teal’c starts to pulls him in (because he’s a really strong BAMF that even gravity cannot beat. GO TEAL’C!) . The bomb detonates…!

…And O’Neill is in a hospital bed, a-okay. Teal’c had managed to pull him away just enough to be out of the blast zone, and the blast did save Earth’s wormhole. Jackson’s back, too, and they’re installing a trinium-based iris now. Two weeks have passed in real time since the incident. That’s pretty crazy.

Final thoughts… Wow, wormholes, black holes, Stargates, bombs, time dilation… This episode was more or less the epitome of “technobabble” as far as we’ve seen in SG-1. This has probably had more to do with physics and astrophysics and the like than any episode prior. I still don’t fully understand how they redirected the black hole and its effects using the blast and the second ‘Gate… but it was cool how they did, anyways.

The whole time dilation effect was really neat and pretty well-done. I wasn’t a huge fan of the slow-motion effects (I found it all pretty laughable) but the rest of the episode was brilliant. Seeing Cromwell get sucked in was a little disappointing, though. I would’ve liked to have seen some sort of closure between him and O’Neill, but that’s something we didn’t get. However, it did add to the whole “no man left behind” idea – something that the SGC ran into with Boyd and the SG-10 team. It’s that “judgment call” mentality that can either save lives or sacrifice them. And that was cool.

PREDICTION/REFLECTION THINGY:

O’Neill: I hate physics.

Carter: I love physics!

Jackson: I have no idea what went on.

Teal’c: I really wish you all would simply stay out of trouble so I would not have to do things like pull you out of black holes.