AP2 Draft 7, chapters 19-27: COMPLETE!
And here we are again: at the chapters leading up to the book’s finale! I made some cuts, but not many. I have also not solved the problem of ‘should this one character die or not.’
As of now, the character lives. And there is nothing this character does following the event in which they may or may not die. Not in this book. Which means I can still have them die or live without making any major changes.
This is also a secondary character, but their death would affect one of the main characters. So I have that to consider as well.
I’d normally ask Kim about this problem, but she’s also having a brush with death at the moment with her rare cancer. Maybe I’ll try asking anyway. I haven’t been able to visit her, either. I’ve tried to visit twice now, but she always says she’s worried about germs and turns me down.
Kim DID decide to go to our class reunion next month. 30 years. Maybe I can talk to her there.
Now here’s what I’ve been watching. Spoilers for Stargate SG-1 season 5 and Supernatural season 12; episode 9. (Yes I only watched one episode this month. Gotta make these DVDs last.)
Stargate SG-1 Season 5 – Yep, I watched it all. Is this the end of the Showtime years? I can’t remember. 🤔
E1; Enemies – Apophis is finally killed for real (as far as I know) in this episode. He dies cowering behind his personal force field as hundreds of Replicators crawl all over him and his ship explodes. Quite a death scene.
The Stargate team makes it back to our galaxy, but Teal’c has been brainwashed into believing he’s a loyal Jaffa again. Get out the shock sticks!
E2; Threshold – The show writer really used the title of one of the most notorious Voyager episodes!? Shocking does not work on Teal’c for some reason, so Bra’tac rips out the Goa’uld parasite and forces out favorite Jaffa into a near-death state. This causes him to relive a series of cool flashbacks until he realizes that it’s his destiny to save SG-1 from all the nutty jams they find themselves in.
E3; Ascension – Remember the time Beverly Crusher fell in love with a hot Irish ghost? This is the Stargate version. Only this ‘ghost’ is really a normal guy that ascended into an energy state. He turns back into a normal human for a while, then leaves through a stargate that he made from hardware store supplies. 🙄
E4; The Fifth Man – There is now a mysterious fifth member of SG-1 named Tyler. Hammond doesn’t remember this guy, but the rest of the team swears he joined up two weeks ago!
Turns out Tyler is an alien that is running from the Goa’uld. He can brainwash people into believing he’s their friend. What’s funny about this episode is that it had a good stopping point, but then they decided to add a crazy battle scene against a whole platoon of Jaffa at the end. Hey, I’m not complaining! It really showed off how Jack learned to trust ol’ Tyler, too. Deception or not, he was part of the team. 😭
E5; Red Sky – The team gets into a nutty jam that even Teal’c can’t solve: they ruin the sun. Yes, by traveling to a planet they accidentally bring some foreign elements through the wormhole. These elements react with the sun as they pass through, changing the nature of the nuclear reaction to make the star too weak to sustain life! Ha,ha, you guys!
We get a good reveal here, too: the Asgardians can NOT interfere in any of their protected worlds unless it involves the Goa’uld. If they do, the treaty is off, and that world becomes FAIR GAME.
SG-1 tries all sorts of things, but they all fail to re-ignite the star. Until the last thing they tried suddenly worked after a bit of a delay! Amazing! Or was it the Asgard? Hmmm! 🤔
E6; Rite of Passage – Cassandra is back! Wow, I almost thought they forgot about her. I should know better by now. I did forget what happened in the episode though. Something about Nirrti experimenting on Cassandra’s people. 🤔
E7; Beast of Burden – Now Daniel’s Unas buddy returns! You see, this super-powerful guy and many of his super-powerful brethren have somehow been captured by normal humans that use pre-1900’s technology. 🙄
Daniel busts some of them out, and the Unas stay on the world that enslaved them. I guess they’re going to form a resistance. Or enslave the humans in revenge. Ha,ha, oh well! What can ya do.
E8; The Tomb – SG-1 teams up with some Russians to find other Russians that got lost in a tomb. There’s some unspeakable monster running around killing everything, and all hope seems lost. Luckily the monster was possessed by a Goa’uld parasite, and the parasite actually LEAVES the monster body voluntarily. To possess a normal human.
C’mon! Parasites! When you have a powerful host you don’t move to a weaker one! I don’t care if he does have a pistol! You stay in the cool CGI monster! 😠
E9; Between Two Fires – Now we have the Goa’uld trying to get around the Asgardian protection treaty. The Tollan, the ultra-high-tech humans that hate sharing anything, are being blackmailed into phasing a bomb past Earth’s stargate iris.
The plan is foiled, but the Tollan world is last seen being bombed from orbit. Ha, ha, so long losers!
E10; 2001 – In a previous episode called 2010, SG-1 had to send a paper note back in time to warn everyone about not going to the Aschen homeworld. In this episode, SG-1 finds one of the worlds controlled by the Aschen, so they indirectly contact the powerful enemy they were vaguely warned not to EVER go near. I guess Jack’s note should have been a bit more specific.
This episode is WAY better than the first Aschen episode, since the stakes are real and you KNOW it will mean the end of Earth if these genocidal freaks get their way.
E11; Desperate Measures – A billionare kidnaps Sam. He knows about the Stargate, because let’s be real: a billionare probably WOULD know about this stuff. This rich guy is dying, and he wants the healing powers of the Goa’uld parasites. Since Sam is the expert, Mr. Moneybags needs her to help get the Goa’uld out once he’s cured.
Also, John de Lancie has been showing up as a Pentagon colonel. Maybourne also pops up to help get Sam back. I really thought Maybourne would be gone for good, but I guess he just can’t stay away from the cloak and dagger life! 😎
E12; Wormhole X-Treme! – Wow, here Stargate was doing meta episodes before Supernatural even started. We see SG-1 watching a commercial for a show about a team of adventurers exploring worlds through wormholes. Turns out their alien buddy from a previous episode wiped his memory again, and is now producing a Stargate rip-off from his repressed memories.
This is pretty much a gag episode, where the writers poke fun at all the ridiculous nonsense that happens all the time. Like at one point you see the actor that plays the ‘Teal’c parody’ in front of his makeup mirror, practicing his eyebrow raising skills. 😆
E13; Proving Ground – This one is just silly. Jack starts off training a bunch of recruits, including the girl from the Prodigy episode. But uh oh! During the training a REAL alien foothold situation breaks out! Remember? That’s when aliens take over the Stargate base!
Now these recruits must work together to take back the stargate! Except it’s all fake. Another test. And then when THAT test is over ANOTHER fake situation breaks out where radiation is coming through the stargate and it’s a whole ‘would you sacrifice yourself to save the team’ kinda test.
As if Hammond would let his ENTIRE base get shut down for a whole day in order to train five kids. Oh, and have the entire staff pretend to be brainwashed by aliens. Yes, the staff is all there, and they pretend to be shot by the recruits’ fake stun weapons and fall down when attacked. The parody Wormhole X-Treme show made more sense than this. 🙄
E14; 48 Hours – Teal’c uses a bazooka to kill the traitor Tok’ra from a previous episode, but it also causes the dude’s ship to crash into the stargate as Teal’c escapes. Teal’c is now trapped in the stargate’s system memory, unable to re-integrate. Bummer.
I honestly forgot about all the crazy stuff they have to do to get Teal’c back. It involves a lot of deals with the Russians and some brainy guy that annoys Sam.
E15; Summit – I can’t believe it! Are we FINALLY doing something with the Goa’uld system lords again!? I mean, the show is half over at this point right? Are they just going to be the big villains forever?
Anyway, there’s a big summit and Daniel is using mind-control tech to get in as a human slave. Once he is there, he will release a toxin that kills every Goa’uld parasite in attendance. Only problem is, Osiris shows up, still using Daniel’s college friend as a host. To be continued.
E16; Last Stand – Daniel decides not to kill everyone at the summit. Good thing too: Osiris is there to make a deal in Anubis’ stead. And since Anubis has been banished by the Goa’uld system lords, he’s in a unique position to attack Earth without breaking the Asgardian’s protection treaty. 😮
Daniel learns this and escapes, but he doesn’t seem to stop anything the Goa’uld were planning. Also, the Tok’ra are nearly wiped out in the ‘B’ plot. Better luck next time I guess? We also STILL haven’t seen what Anubis even looks like. It seems he’s the ‘Imu’ of Stargate SG-1. (Imu is a One Piece villain that was depicted as a silhouette for EIGHT YEARS.)
E17; Fail Safe – Well, we don’t have time to worry about the Goa’uld; an asteroid is about to destroy Earth! Ha,ha, no, it’s really a plot by the Goa’uld to circumvent the Asgard treaty and attack Earth by making it look like a natural event. What sneaksters.
Not to worry, though! SG-1 is on the case. They’ve got a ship that they got from some episode or another, and have a rousing day dodging death numerous times before finally just using the ship’s hyperdrive engines to warp the asteroid past Earth’s orbit.
Is that what they’re calling it? Hyperdrive? That’s what Star Wars called it! Even Farscape used the somewhat original name of ‘starburst!’ You think of a new name right now, writers! Ah, I guess it’s too late for that.
E18; The Warrior – There’s a new leader of the Jaffa resistance. Turns out he’s a Goa’uld though. Yes, that’s the whole episode. It was fun to see Teal’c bamboozled for once. And boy, he was NOT happy when the ruse was uncovered. Those slow-mo battles scenes got WILD. 😆
E19; Menace – Whoa! Cecile from The Flash shows up! And she’s an android! An android that CREATED THE REPLICATORS!? See, that’s what Star Trek was missing: a good explanation for where the Borg originated. Bravo, Stargate SG-1. Bravo.
Daniel was also amazing in this episode, with his desperate attempt to talk the android down from destroying the base.
E20; The Sentinel – Before they were shut down, Mayborne’s evil Stargate team screwed up some planet’s ‘sentinel’ defense system. Now Jack needs the help of some of Mayborne’s former team members to fix it.
And it takes them forever to fix the dumb thing since nothing about it is ever explained. How does it work? Why does it need a human soul to activate? Is it alive? Is the soul controlling the magical blast that takes all the bad guys away to save the planet? Who knows. Maybe next season we’ll find out.
And if this were any other show, that would be a quick joke. But this is Stargate SG-1, where no episode exists in a vacuum. The Sentinel will probably have it’s own multi-episode backstory soon, mark my words.
E21; Meridian – As the episode starts, Daniel is rushed to Stargate sick bay. Seems he’s been irradiated while visiting a new world. A new world that is home to everyone’s favorite high school bad boy: Parker Lewis!
What hijinks will ol’ Parker get up to this time? Or should I say Jonas Quinn? Well, it seems that his world has discovered a new Goa’uld material and have decided to make a bomb out of it. This material is highly radioactive, and as Daniel and Jonas observe the scientists behind an observation booth, the bomb becomes unstable. As the world’s leaders flee and Jonas cowers, Daniel blasts apart the safety glass with a gun and jumps into the bomb-making chamber. With all the other scientists dead from radiation, Daniel decides to stop the chain reaction himself. With his bare hands.
And here we are back in the present, with Daniel dying and the alien world blaming HIM for what happened. The U.S. government, hungry for a rare alien material, plays along with Daniel’s accusers in order to get some juicy tech.
Jack, of course, is furious. Daniel saved one world, and now BOTH worlds are throwing him under the bus.
As everyone tries their best to save Daniel, an old friend shows up in Daniel’s mind. Yes, it is the energy being that Daniel visited several seasons ago. 😯
Daniel is given the opportunity to ‘ascend’ and leave his physical body. As he discusses the value of his life inside his own mind, Jonas Quinn steals the new material and flees his planet. It seems Daniel’s soul-searching has paid off, and Jonas was moved through his sacrifice to abandon the bomb-making project.
Daniel vanishes in a flash of light right before he dies, never to be seen again.
E22; Revelations – And the season’s not done yet! Anubis launches a blatant attack on an Asgard-protected world. Thor shows up in his battlecruiser to dispense some laser blasting justice, only to get smacked down by some new Goa’uld shield technology.
Uh-oh! Better call SG-1 to save Thor’s grey tuchas once again! This time Thor is captured and melded with Anubis’ ship in order to learn everything he knows. This gives Thor a little bit of control over certain ship functions, which helps the SG-1 team in their rescue effort.
There were some good moments with Sam and the other SG-1 members as she tried to mourn Daniel. “We didn’t even have a memorial service!” And then Hammond responds that we’re not even sure if Daniel is dead. Maybe he will come back? 🤔
Supernatural – Season 12; Episode 9 – Speaking of dead people, Sam and Dean both die in this episode. Yes, AGAIN. How many times is it now?
This episode picks up right after the one where Lucifer possesses the fictional U.S. president. The bros had exorcised the Beast, but were also captured by the Secret Service for ‘attacking’ the president.
Now Sam and Dean are wasting away in a secret prison, where there is no hope of escaping alive. So they both ask Billie the reaper to kill them! What a plan. After their corpses are taken out to the morgue, the bros come back to life and start causing havoc as they try to escape the area.
Castiel, Mary, and the Men of Letters from Europe all meet up with them at the end, where it is explained that the bros made a deal with Billie to die and come back to life. However, there is a cost: a Winchester must now DIE at midnight.
Who will it be? Sam? Or maybe Dean? Could Mary, their mother, count as the sacrifice? Ha,ha, no, Castiel will just stake Billie from behind with an angel blade.
See you next time!