AP2 Draft 7, chapters 11-18: COMPLETE!
I separated another chapter into two. The book is flowing well; it’s just that one chapter was way too long.
Otherwise, I’m just polishing away at everything.
Now, time for twenty pages of stuff I’ve been watching! 😅
Let’s talk about the films I’ve seen first, before we go swirling down the Stargate season rabbit hole. Spoilers for No Time to Die, Masters of the Universe (2026), Stargate SG-1 S4.
No Time to Die – This is the longest movie in the entire James Bond series, and it took me three days to watch it all. Two hours and forty-some minutes. The movie was VERY easy to follow, however.
I was amazed at this, since No Time to Die is effectively the finale of Daniel Craig’s five-film Bond run. After all, there are multi-year gaps in between all these stories, and some characters carry over along with story elements. I was expecting to be totally lost, even though I saw Spectre just last year.
But everything made sense. The only real problem I had was the villain. He doesn’t get enough time with Bond or the audience, and his evil monologue is a bit too much like Malos’ speech in Xenoblade Chronicles 2: The Golden Country. But you probably picked up on that right away.
Uh, spoilers for that.
And what was with Bond having a kid!? I don’t enjoy it when my loner heroes get biological children; it’s so unrelatable! C’mon! Let’s just be childless for our entire lives! But I’ll let this one slide since Bond dies at the end and his life is over anyway. 😅
Masters of the Universe – I was born in 1978, so I grew up with the original He-man show and toys. I thought the 1987 film was good, and I did not think they needed a modern film. Y’know, because modern media can totally ruin everything I loved in the past. So I did not have high expectations for this.
But when the film started, I had some hope. The effects were good! The attack on Eternia was everything I imagined as a boy: Trapjaw in all his color-accurate, metal-jawed glory leading a raid against king Randor’s forces. I was like “Yes! They got it right!” 🤩
For about twenty minutes. Then the usual crap shows up. Terrible jokes. Making Adam grow up on Earth so that we get countless nonsense from our world. “I work in H.R.! Let’s talk this out, Skeletor!” And what my brother calls ‘Marvel movie stupidness.’ You know what I mean; every ‘weird’ name and character feature has to get brought up and ridiculed by the characters as a wink to the audience. “See! We know Moss Man is a stupid name! Please don’t turn the movie off!”
No. This is a fictitious world. Moss-covered monster dudes are normal here, so you should not have the characters act like it’s weird.
Otherwise, you get some cool battle sequences and a ton of pep talks. Nothing too amazing.
And what in the world was that post-battle ending!? Everyone with that hands-on-hips laughing like in the old cartoon!? And Adam, after telling EVERYONE that he’s He-man now, goes off to transform in secret!? Oh, and Orko! WHY have him absent for the film, only to show up for fifteen seconds before the credits roll!? Are new fans going to know who this hovering wizard is? Why not put him in the movie before this!? Baffling.
Stargate SG-1: Season 4 – I finished season four, so here we go.
E1; Small Victories – Things start out wild. After Thor’s battlecruiser was destroyed in Earth’s atmosphere, one Replicator survived and crawled into a Russian submarine. It is now taking apart the sub and multiplying once again.
As if this wasn’t enough, Thor invites Sam over to the Asgardian home world. Ol’ Thor figures that since the Stargate team did such a great job of destroying replicators, they can brainstorm up an idea to destroy even MORE of them! Yes, three more infested battlecruisers are on their way to Thor’s homeworld RIGHT NOW.
It’s two amazing stories for the price of one episode! In the end, Thor’s new battlecruiser, the Jack O’Neill, explodes in a kamikaze attack to take out the other three. The Asgardians would never have done this on their own, praising Sam for such a brilliant, but stupid idea. 😅
E2; The Other Side – Rene Auberjonois of DS9 fame finally appears. He plays the leader of an advanced nation, and he’s ready to share his amazing technology in exchange for ordinary Earth water! What could go wrong!?
Turns out he gassed the entire surface of his own planet because he’s racist. Whoops! Better luck next time, SG-1!
E3; Upgrades – Uh, isn’t this an episode of Gargoyles? The one where the Pack gets turned into cyborgs and superhumans? Because wouldn’t you know: that’s EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS to the SG-1 crew.
As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, Vanessa Angel shows up in a role much like her Weird Science days. She arrives from the Tok’ra resistance with a genie-like gift: MAGIC ARMBANDS that give humans superpowers. No, I’m not joking. Jack, Sam, and Daniel strap those bad boys on and are soon smashing concrete with their bare hands and zooming around like the Flash. 🤣
They use these fabulous powers to demolish Apophis’ new mothership, but much to their horror, the armbands fall off during the mission. Turns out these abilities are temporary. Teal’c, who was left out of the fun, shows up to rescue everyone yet again.
E4; Crossroads – A Goa’uld wants to defect to the Tok’ra. Turns out it’s a trick, but everyone allows it because they can feed the spy misinformation. Sounds like a dumb idea, but at least Vanessa Angel shows up again. 😄
E5; Divide and Conquer – In addition to all the other dangers, now we have mind-controlled people called Za’tarcs killing their own allies and trying to assassinate the president. No one even knows how it happens! But the Tok’ra DO know how to tell if someone has had their memories altered: take a lie detector test that detects your emotions as well.
The Tok’ra figure that since SG-1 has only been around Goa’uld during that recent magic armband mission, that would have been the only time they could have been brainjacked. However, as the team recounts their amazing super-powered adventure, a lie is detected. Jack and Sam both fail the test; a memory during the raid on the ship is declared by the machine as faulty. Now the two are going to be put in jail forever—or worse! But at the last moment we see what the ‘lie’ in their minds was about.
The problem wasn’t about the facts: it was about emotion. Back at the end of that episode when the powers ran out, and Sam and Jack were about to be killed, they wouldn’t leave each other behind. They said it was because of loyalty to their team. Jack lied about how he felt then, that he had feelings that a commanding officer shouldn’t have for his subordinate.
Turns out the Za’tarc was some other guy entirely. But what’s really weird is that every time an unwitting mind slave Za’tarc tries to kill someone, they always have some alien weapon on them. Why not just search everyone for that weapon? 🤔
E6; Window of Opportunity – I started using IMDB.com as a quick reference to recall the episode titles and names of characters. (As if I would remember ‘Za’tarc’ on my own.) Each episode has a numbered rating from one to ten. This episode is sitting at 9.5, way above any others I’ve seen. (Every other episode this season is 8.6 or lower.)
And I’m a bit baffled. It’s a time loop story. That’s it. Been done to death at this point. Although maybe not at the time this episode was released? But still, nothing new happens here. Jack and Teal’c are the only ones aware of the time loop, and they try to stop it, while having the usual fun along the way.
It comes nowhere close to Trek‘s Cause and Effect, which I think is one of the best time loop stories of all time. OF ALL TIME! 😝
E7; Watergate – Marina Sirtis shows up as a Russian for some reason. What’s next, Colm Meany as a Deep South lawyer?
Anyway, remember the start of the season? When the team beamed up the stargate to Thor’s battlecruiser and then the entire thing blew up above the ocean? Turns out the Russians stole the stargate out of the water! Now they’ve opened the stargate to some horrible ocean planet and now it won’t close! Also, Maybourne is there. And water monsters.
E8; The First Ones – Daniel is kidnapped by a primitive Unas while exploring the planet where the Goa’uld originated. Those slippery parasites are still infesting these fetid waters, and Daniel forms a bond with an Unas as they make their way to his clan’s home.
But I’m left wondering: how did the Goa’uld even LEAVE this planet in the first place? The Unas are still living in caves! Did the Ancients pick them up while building their stargates? Will I ever learn what the Ancients even are!? 😅
E9; Scorched Earth – Some dudes are being re-settled to a new planet, complements of the SG-1 crew. Only problem is, a massive ship shows up and starts terraforming the entire world with flamethrower cannons.
What is a boy to do? The flamethrower aliens claim they were here first: no sentient life was detected when they started the flamethrowing process on the other side of the planet weeks ago. Looks like the Stargate team screwed up again by not checking the entire planet for flamethrowning aliens FIRST.
A cool episode, though. For once, the aliens were somewhat reasonable AND they ended up helping the settlers find their original planet. A+.
They also did NOT skimp on the flamethrowing effects.
E10; Beneath the Surface – Gotta be kidding me—they’re really doing a ‘Workforce’ episode!? That was one of the silliest Voyager two-parters, where the ENTIRE crew is captured and brainwashed into doing menial labor on some planet. Yes, an alien race powerful enough to disable Voyager AND the crew, and they just want to use everyone as working stiffs for some power plant. Ridiculous.
OH! And I just looked it up: that Voyager episode came out a few months AFTER this Stargate episode. So Stargate did it first! And guess what? This episode is better!
So the premise is mostly the same: SG-1 is working at some alien power plant with their true memories erased. How did they get there? Well, they were exploring this world and found an amazing city built under a glass bubble. There’s bleak tundra outside for miles, but the people of the city stay nice and warm thanks to a mysterious power source. Jack, as usual, pokes around until he discovers the secret brainwashed slaves that shovel coal into furnaces beneath the city.
Uh-oh! The aliens can’t let the secret out, so they brainwash SG-1 with some kind of stamp. They don’t show the process, so I’ll just assume it’s a rubber stamp with a sad-looking brain on it.
See? This fixes the problem Voyager had. Now there’s a good reason for highly skilled individuals to be working nine-to-five.
And the ending here is SO GOOD. Not only does SG-1 escape, but they take all the other workers with them at the end. Jack even gloats in front of the alien leader, telling him there’s a nice warm world the workers can live on with beaches for miles. “You losers can do your own shoveling for a while.” 😆
E11; Point of No Return – An conspiracy theorist finds Jack and tells him that he KNOWS about the stargate. Turns out that this guy was really an alien, brainwashed by his alien buddies into thinking he’s a normal human! Wow, those memory stamps are getting popular.
E12; Tangent – Jack and Teal’c test out the death glider that the Air Force modified. As they tear ass all over Carl’s backyard, the dang ship suddenly goes into hyperdrive and flies into outer space. Then it shuts off with a message from Apophis: “Traitor! How dare you steal my ship! Now drift in the endless void until you die!”
This episode has some good ‘real science’ as you’d probably call it. The crew back on Earth communicates with Jack over the radio, but there’s a big delay since the death glider is currently near Saturn and drifting further away from Earth. There’s also some cool stuff with trying to slingshot around a planet using one of the rockets that were equipped by the Air Force.
In the end, it’s Sam and her dad to the rescue in a Tok’ra ship, so I guess all that real science didn’t matter too much. 🤔
E13; The Curse – Daniel meets up with some old archeology buddies, so that’s fun. They’re all giving him a hard time because from their perspective he just vanished after that lecture on aliens being responsible for the pyramids in the original film. 😅
In the end, another Goa’uld is awakened and gets away. Lame.
E14; The Serpent’s Venom – Right, Teal’c is kidnapped in this one. Then there’s something about mines in a space minefield that Daniel needs to hack. Can’t really remember.
OH, right. Apophis’ new fleet that he stole from Satan gets destroyed by the mines. Bummer. We need a better villain; this guy is getting stale. 😭
E15; Chain Reaction – General Hammond is finally retiring. Ha,ha,ha… yeah right. What is this, MASH? There were fake-out retirements every season on that show.
Turns out, Hammond was being blackmailed by the Deep State. Yep, Rush Limbaugh was right all along. But don’t worry; Jack and Maybourne blackmail Senator Jellico twice as hard and save the day. Hammond comes back with a smile. Easy peasy. 🙄
E16; 2010 – Far in the future of sixteen years ago, aliens called Aschen have saved humanity with their great technology and defeated the Goa’uld forever. Great, right? Not so! Sam, now married, discovered a horrible secret—the Aschen have sterilized most of the humans and plan on taking over Earth without firing a shot.
It’s up to the now-disbanded SG-1 crew to get back together for one last mission: TOSSING A PAPER NOTE THROUGH THE STARGATE!
After the gate is set up for time travel, of course! Doesn’t an episode of Invader Zim turn out like this?
It takes the entire team just to make it to the heavily-armed gate area, and now MANY shots are being fired. Turrets blasting away as Daniel, Teal’c, Sam, and Jack rush a paper note through endless laser blasts. Everyone is killed, but the note makes it through with a final toss from Jack. It arrives in the hands of SG-1 in the year 2000.
“Dear Jack, don’t go to Aschen world. Love, Jack.” 😁
E17; Absolute Power – This is another episode that doesn’t really happen. Daniel finds his wife’s son again, and now he has amazing mystic powers. Daniel asks for Goa’uld knowledge, and the kid zaps him.
When Daniel awakes, he has POWER OVERWHELMING! He knows everything! Including how to make orbital laser cannons!
I won’t waste too much time describing what happens, since it will all turn out to be a dream, but it all ends with Daniel vaporizing Moscow from orbit in a mad hunger for world domination. And yes, we get to see the Kremlin blow up. That’ll teach ’em to send me the wrong pieces in Tetris!
Daniel then wakes up and realizes he should not have the knowledge to make orbital laser cannons. The child leaves by transforming into a magic cloud of energy. The end.
E18; The Light – SG-1 gets hooked on a magic light show in a Goa’uld ‘opium den’ world. Not only are Jack and his team ‘light junkies’ now, but if they leave the planet, they will die! 😲
That is, until Daniel translates the instruction manual for the light machine. Now they can wean themselves off ‘the light’ in a few weeks. Gotta be kidding me. 🤨
E19; Prodigy – A female version of Wesley Crusher appears. In an interesting twist, she DOESN’T solve the problem of the episode. You see, when the team is attacked by electric fairies, the prodigy in question proposes a plan along with Sam. Jack actually goes with the more practical solution that Sam suggests, and the day is saved. The prodigy realizes that they aren’t as smart as they thought they were and agrees to train harder.
It was a much-welcome reversal of the early Next Generation plots. Time to get out the shocked face emoji for real this time! 😲
E20; Entity – Sam is possessed by computer ghosts. I don’t know. She gets out of it by being electrocuted or something. Is this season almost over!?
E21; Double Jeopardy – Okay HERE WE GO. The SG-1 team arrives on a planet they’ve previously freed from the Goa’uld. The natives are quite angry because the Goa’uld have since some back to enslave everyone. But the team is confused. They don’t know these people. And they seem shocked that these people would capture them and bring them before the new Goa’uld leader.
Then I’M the shocked one when a Jaffa holds up a staff cannon and BLOWS OFF DANIELS HEAD! Yes, it flies off his body.
Only, there seems to be something strange where is spinal cord should be: machinery.
We now cut back to Stargate Command, where the SG-1 crew gets a visitor. It is Harlan, the dude that made android copies of SG-1 back in SEASON ONE. These android copies have now started to go on adventures thanks to the robot Sam’s invention of a portable power source. These androids are the ones we’ve been following on the alien planet, and it is these androids that the REAL team decided to rescue.
All in all, an amazing episode. There’s even a VERY convincing shot of Jack putting his robot double in a headlock.
I’m pretty sure most of the robots die in the rescue, but at least Teal’c AND his robot get revenge on Cronus for his father’s death. 😅
Oh, and they steal Cronus’ mothership. 😮
E22; Exodus – SG-1 agrees to help move the Tok’ra to another world using their new mothership. But uh-oh! Apophs’s fleet shows up! Is it time for a glorious super battle between ships?
Haha, no! It’s time to take the stargate from the Tok’ra’s world; dial up that planet with the black hole from season whatever; then toss the stargate into the system’s sun to cause a supernova.
Daniel! Don’t you remember the lesson about absolute power!? Don’t you think blowing up a solar system is a bit much!? Anyway, as SG-1 and their new mothership escape the nova, so does Apophis. And they all get sent to a far-off galaxy in the process. 🙄
Supernatural S12 – I didn’t make it too much further in the season. Two episodes. Gotta savor it, I guess. 😅
E7; Rock Never Dies – Now we’re back with Lucifer as he is summoned from the ocean floor by a bunch of high-school Satanists. After he kills them, he decides to take up the role of ‘rock star’ that his host, Vince Vincente, provides. The bros head to Los Angeles along with Castiel and Crowley, but they have no idea how they’re going to stop him.
And they don’t! They have a big confrontation at a come-back concert, but Lucifer lets everyone live. ‘Because they can’t kill him anyway.’ Vince dies, but Lucifer’s spirit flies off to possess more people. ‘Onward and Upward’ he says. How upward?
E8; LOTUS – Yes, Lucifer possesses the President of the United States! However, the show uses a fictional president. And here I was, looking forward to endless Trump references for these final four seasons.
Again, the bros have no way to stop Lucifer. They just decide to call Crowley’s mom and hope for the best. But they catch a lucky break! The president is NOT in D.C. No, he’s at some villa somewhere in, uh, let’s say Missouri. And his secret service agents are terrible. At least that part is accurate.
Thankfully, Mr. Ketch shows up to lend a hand. He’s the secret British agent that’s been following the bros, and he has just what they need: a holy hand grenade to blast Lucifer right out of his presidential host.
Unfortunately, after breaking into the presidents room and blowing up Lucifer, the bros are taken into custody.
Well, I guess the Winchesters will be in federal prison for the rest of the season. A similar situation happened on Arrow, so maybe they’ll meet Oliver Queen.
Oh, and Lucifer got someone pregnant. Castiel was supposed to watch her, but she gave him the slip while he was eating some toast at a diner. Yes, the almighty angel was tricked by the ol’ ‘I’m going to the bathroom for a mintue’ routine. 🙄
See you next time!