Another of the small joys in my life is space shows. Now, if you base one on ancient Egyptian mythos and toss in a romantic subtext, it rocks my world.

Stargate: SG-1 is based on the movie "Stargate". Most of similarities end at Dr. Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) and Jack O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) and the Stargate itself. But it still has great bad guys out to get us poor backward Earthlings and I have to admit, the show has grown in a lot of unexpected and really great ways.

Sadly, Stargate lives in a time-slot black-hole. To this day, it's either up against something I can't live without or buried in the early hours of the morning. I struggle to keep up and I think it's even changed stations from FOX to UPN. Either way, it's tough to find.

I also think they forgot to broadcast a season on network television. They had done a season ahead on cable, on the Sci-Fi Network, but it hadn't been on network TV. Now I'm kind of lost in a lot of the plots and wondering where my Jack and Samantha plot disappeared to.

But I've been with it since it began and intend to keep watching until someone takes it from me. It's interesting, fast paced, fun, and a good time away from reality.

Favorite Episode

I had to think a while on this one, but I'll go with season 4's "Divide and Conquer".

It wasn't flashy, but it was the trickiest episode I've seen from any show in a long while. Why? Because they made it for one reason, and for one reason only.

In this episode, the Tok'ra have agreed to meet with the President and sign a charter, kind of a 'good faith' agreement to work together. (Although they've been working together for at least a year, but hey, officials aren't quick.) During an initial meeting, it is discovered that a member of an SG team has been turned into a Zatarg, a Goa'uld assassin, using mind controls. Fearing other such assassins, a search begins among the SG teams. It turns out Jack and Major Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) both test positive for it.

The test is basically a 'lie detector' test. However, it tests not what you believe, but what your body knows to be true. Anything less than complete and utter honest about events, feelings, and sequence register as false memories, most likely placed in the victim's mind by the Goa'uld to cover the tracks of the Zatarg mind control device.

Anyhow, Samantha and Jack test positive. The alternatives are simple. First, they can be left alone and kill the President. Second, they can be kept confined, and kill themselves when they discover they can't kill the President. Third, they can be put to sleep for however long it takes to find a cure. Fourth, they can undergo a Tok'ra deprogramming session which 'should' restore their memories, but forced the last human they tested to kill herself.

Jack chooses to undergo the deprogramming, while Sam is forced into a drug-induced stasis. However, she realizes (as I did about now) that there was a reason the testing machine showed the two of them had false memories about the event. They had lied without consciously knowing they had lied.

Basically, the entire show is a setup for this event. And there's no other way around it. The two of them have to NOT lie in order to survive, in order to be marked sane and left alone. And the writers of this particular episode went up about 100% in my estimation.

Because the lie was their feelings. They couldn't admit to themselves they have feelings for one another, so of course they didn't admit it out loud during the testing. Now, in order to move past this, as Sam tells Jack, they have to admit it, and be honest and give nothing less than all of the truth, in front of those present.

And magically, they pass the test.

The simple genius of forcing these feelings out into the open was brilliant. Now, every episode after this, there will always and ever be this undercurrent that we know about. It's out there, for everyone, even the characters, to observe, understand, appreciate, and enjoy. Of course, given their 'military ranking', they can't really openly admit to these feelings outside that room (and agree to much the same), but it's there.

I love this show. Pure genius, that.

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