AP2 DRAFT 6: COMPLETE!
I love it when a book draft gets to this point. I mean, it’s only happened TWO times now but it’s still exciting! Now every re-read from this point on will go at top speed, with very little downtime spent altering content.
As far as the book content is concerned, there is still one ‘problem’ I haven’t yet figured out how to solve. Either I’d better come up with a solution SOON or I’ll kick the can down the road to the next book. I’d rather not do that—but hey! If I put all my brain power into one problem it can’t be too hard to figure out.
Now on to the Stargate stuff.
My brother knew that I’ve been watching Stargate SG-1, so he got me the feature film Stargate for my birthday! Starring Kurt Russel. 😎
I see the movie as being so-so if you never ever want to watch the TV show. However, if you look at the film as the prologue for the show and continue with THAT, it is most excellent.
I mean, the show respects the film. At least so far. They use the same technology and characters, with only minor changes. One character’s name is changed slightly. And there is no mention of the Goa’uld in the film. Or worm baby parasites. But the ideas from the show ALWAYS expand on what the film started. So here we go with season two.
Stargate SG-1: Season 2
By the way, did you like my hilarious gag at the end of the last post? Contrary to what I said, Stargate SG-1 did not end with the episode ‘Politics.’ There are nine more seasons! 😆
S1, E21: Within the Serpent’s Grasp – The SG1 team decides, without permission, to use the coordinates that Daniel got from the other dimension. They end up on a pyramid ship ALREADY ON ITS WAY TO EARTH to destroy the human race. What a cliffhanger!
S2, E1: The Serpent’s Lair – Oh by the way there are TWO motherships headed to Earth now. Sheesh, shouldn’t this be the SERIES finale? It’s wild and crazy, with the military attacking with their own missiles from Earth as the rogue SG1 team runs wild on the two ships, planting C4 all over the place. They run into some old friends, have some close calls, and it all ends with massive EXPLOSIONS across the sky.
S2, E2: In the Line of Duty – And then everyone is dishonorably discharged for disobeying orders. Ha,ha, no, they’re all let off the hook for SAVING THE WORLD! And the Stargate program is funded by Congress again, I assume. 🤨
Sam is possessed by a Goa’uld in this one, but the little bugger claims to be from a resistance movement. The worm is killed by an assassin, but Sam is fine. Could this Goa’uld have been telling the truth!? 🤔
S2, E3: Prisoners – What in the world? ANOTHER ‘we stepped on some flowers and are going to jail’ episode? This is season two! We’re supposed to have moved on to god-like entities toying with everyone and weird alien pregnancies.
It was pretty funny that they escape the alien prison, but the genocidal maniac gets away too. Will she show up again?
S2, E4: The Gamekeeper – Oh, here we go. The team gets sucked into evil Virtual Reality macines. Dwight Schultz himself shows up to play a god-like being that torments everyone with memories of their past. We see that Daniel’s parents were killed by a faulty museum exhibit. 😭
Dwight’s hilarious here, demanding that people play his VR game so that they don’t have to experience the horrors of the post-apocalyptic planet. Only problem is that the SG1 team saw that the planet was lush with plant life on the way to the evil VR machines. The inhabitants find out, and they all escape. Poor Dwight is left fretting over people ‘ruining’ his perfect, real world by picking flowers. 🤣
S2, E5: Need – A very special episode where Daniel gets addicted to magical sarcophagi. Turns out they steal a piece of your soul every time they’re used. So the next time someone offers you immortality by way of magical sarcophagus, JUST SAY ‘FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD!’
S2, E6: Thor’s Chariot – Spoilers! The chariot is actually a battlecruiser from Starcraft that shows up and annihilates multiple Goa’uld pyramid ships and every single Goa’uld on the planet. SG1 had to pass Odin’ escape room gauntlet in order for the ship to show up though.
The team finally talks to a real Asguardian, whose true form is a little grey alien dude. He tells them that they’re at war with the Goa’uld. Although I’m not sure how they’re still ‘at war’ with them when ONE ‘chariot’ can wipe out a whole planet by itself. 🤔
Maybe the Goa’uld had a mutalisk swarm. Or seven stimpacked marines.
S2, E7: Message in a Bottle – This is that old story where something unknown is brought back to base from a strange planet; the unknown thing starts killing everyone; but then it turns out the U.T. is actually aliens trying to communicate.
S2, E8: Family – Teal’c’s son shows up again. He’s been brainwashed by Apophis, but all it takes is a little shock to jog his memory and REMOVE months of conditioning. Super lame resolution.
S2, E9: Secrets – Oh no! There’s trouble in Washington D.C. when Jack and Sam go to receive medals from the president himself! Which president? Who knows; he’s never shown or named! That’s the first secret.
But a reporter with a parabolic microphone catches Jack talking about stargates. Uh oh, that’s supposed to be TOP secret. The reporter boasts, saying ‘I’m going to tell the world about stargates! And there’s nothing you can do about it!’
Then the reporter is ran over by a car. Jack is horrified, but general Hammond insists the whole thing was an accident. 🤨
There’s also some stuff about Daniel’s wife and how she got pregnant with Apophis’ child, but what’s really important is that Erick Avari appears as the character he played in the Stargate film! Remember? The guy that ate the 5th Avenue candy bar? What a scene.
S2, E10: Bane – Every inmate of Arkham Asylum as been freed! Can the Dark Knight recapture them all and maintain his sanity!? Or will a calculating new foe finally BREAK THE BAT!?
Just kidding; in this one Teal’c gets infested with even MORE parasites. These new parasites force him to remove the Goa’uld parasite. Then he meets a little girl and they have a squirtgun fight. Yeah, my version with Batman was better.
S2, E11 and 12: The Tok’ra – The SG1 team finally tracks down the resistance movement, and they’re a big bunch of jerks who don’t want any help from stupid Earthlings. It’s a good thing that Sam’s dad was introduced a couple episodes ago, because he’s dying from cancer and would make a really good host for the dying resistance leader’s parasite.
Now with Sam’s dad hosting the Tok’ra leader, maybe SG1 can start getting some help with the whole ‘galactic war’ that could be coming.
S2, E13: Spirits – Well gosh what do I call these guys? Are they still native Americans if they’ve never been to America? Their ancestors were taken from there, then they repopulated on another planet with other aliens that posed as wolf and crow spirits.
The wolf and crow soon learn that the U.S. military is going to plunder their planet’s resources, so they go on a rampage at Cheyanne Mountain Base. The issue is resolved when the U.S. promises not to take the aliens’ resources. (Insert gag about how this is the most unrealistic episode ever.)
S2, E14: Touchstone – Oh dang, this one’s crazy. The ‘touchstone’ in question is a weather-control device on another planet. SG1 goes to study the artifact, but find out that the touchstone has already been stolen—by other humans with similar gear to SG1!
Turns out some unknown organization has been using the SECOND stargate that was found in season one! Is the military in on it? Who is behind this? The answers are not out there this time, because when SG1 finds the other stargate in Utah, all of the people there escape through it and are never seen again! (Not in this season anyway.)
The second stargate is recovered and sealed away at Cheyanne Mountain Complex, but just who were those guys? Do I smell an X-Files crossover? 😎
S2, E15: The Fifth Race – Or is it time for a Fifth Element crossover instead? It must be sweeps week or something, because this one’s another wild journey. The SG1 team finds a strange room on a distant world with Asgardian writing. Jack is soon grabbed by a machine and has his head filled up with ALIEN knowledge.
He can’t quite control what he does, and in his trance he creates a power source that sends the stargate to another galaxy completely!
It is there that he finds the Asgardians in all their grey alien glory. They take the knowledge from him and lay down the usual ‘humanity is not ready yet’ speech.
Jack says ‘But we’re out here already! We’re curious! We’re doing our best! Why not help us out a bit, huh!?’
The Asgardians shake hands and say ‘You are on your way to becoming the fifth race.’
Because there are four races teamed up against the Goa’uld. Forgot to tell you. The four races so far are Asgard, the Nox, the Furrians, and the Ancients.
Dang, the Furrians? Does this mean Star Fox and Slippy Toad are living in the Stargate universe? A Starfox remake was just announced, so maybe!
S2, E16: A Matter of Time – One of the other SG teams goes to a planet with a black hole nearby. They try to escape back through the gate, but the gravity causes time to slow. This keeps the gate open somehow, and then time INSIDE the Cheyanne Mountain Base slows.
It all sounds like complete nonsense, but I’m not Albert Einstein so I just enjoyed the episode anyway. 🙂
S2, E17: Serpent’s Song – Like Q in season three of Next Generation, Apophis is chased out of his ‘continuum’ by the other system lords. He is caught by SG1 and taken back to Earth. Dying and helpless, every member of the SG1 team comes by sickbay to taunt or interrogate him.
And just like that Q episode, a powerful enemy is on the other side of the stargate, just chomping at the bit to flambé Apophis with a particle accelerator. With the iris glowing under the intense heat, the SG1 team has no choice but to let Apophis die and dump his body where they found him.
We also got to hear the ‘host’ that Apophis possessed all those thousands of years ago. There was some great acting as the parasite dies and the newly-freed host cries out in Egyptian, clearly baffled at his situation. Daniel helps him ease into the afterlife with his knowledge of ancient customs. Really cool stuff.
S2, E18: Holiday – The mind-swap episode! Next Generation never did this one, but Farscape and every other sci-fi/fantasy show sure did. Seeing Christopher Judge finally bust loose as a mind-swapped Jack was wild and amazing. Richard Dean Anderson as Teal’c… not so much. He was just far too robotic. Teal’c IS stoic, but he always has a hint of a smile or eyebrow-raise when the time is right.
S2, E19: One False Step – A super boring episode, but at least the crazy setting of ‘mushroom-man world’ is worth a bit of entertainment. What’s wild is that Sam cuts her hand on a knife—and it ends up being important two episodes later! 😮
S2, E20: Show and Tell – Invisible Zerg aliens are trying to kill off humans as a way to deny Goa’uld host bodies. I’m not sure whey invisible Zerg aliens would think that’s a good idea when you could just be invisible and plasma-blast Goa’uld instead, but that’s probably why these invisible idiots STILL all get killed in this one.
To use a Starcraft analogy, the aliens were using Dark Templars when SG1 had a team full of Observers and Photon Cannons. 👁🗨
S2, E21: 1969 – The SG1 crew FINALLY gets sent back in time. I can’t believe we almost went TWO whole seasons without time travel! Close one.
As the title says, they get stuck in 1969. The stargate sent them there, but there’s no available stargate in the sixties to get them back. Going to Antarctica isn’t an option, but they have a hand-written message from General Hammond with vital clues. This episode is crazy and ‘far-out,’ with a short visit to the future as an extra bonus. A+
They briefly see Cassandra as an old woman, who tells them that their adventure is ‘just getting started!’ Like all those online player messages in Elden Ring. 😅
S2, E22: Out of Mind – Gotta be kidding me—it’s ANOTHER CLIP SHOW. And this is the final episode of the season!? UGH.
The SG1 team has been abducted by a mysterious people who are posing as future humans with a B.S. story about how the SG1 team got put into stasis for years and years and now they need to remember what happened. As the team recalls all the fun things they’ve experienced, monitors play out clips from important episodes.
What’s really weird is that the special effects get a boost here. Even in clips from season one! I know because I took a picture on my phone of the Nox’s floating city back then, but in this episode the floating city is clearer, and it’s even rotating in the sky.
Anyway, Hathor turns out to be behind the whole thing. Remember? The queen that births parasites. She needs info about the ‘state of the universe’ since her imprisonment was centuries long, and since everyone is immune to her powers now for some reason, the clip show seemed like the logical thing to do.
After all the clips are done we get a cliffhanger with Hathor taking out a parasite and holding it up in now-CGI glory. ‘I will infect one of you, SG1!’ Then the scene ends with Jack’s best Quantum Leap ‘Oh boy’ face. 😯
This is not nearly as good an ending as season one had. Could the show be slipping already? Maybe I’ll take a break from Stargate SG-1 to try out my OTHER birthday present. Behold:
Supernatural season 12! Thank you, my brother! And of course, Bemis Public Library. I just looked it up on Google Maps. It’s a nice building, with multiple floors and artwork on the walls.
See you next time!