Continuing Stargate

[s09119]

*scratched head* *pulls out map* Proverbial....proverbial ....

They're on Chulak, just past the Metaphorical Mountains!

[JamesPeterson]

Apparently whoever named Chulak's geography was an English major. Who knew?

[s09119]

16x07 "Paragon"
Synopsis: Jason Carter is kidnapped by a cult of religious fanatics who plan to force his evolved abilities into action to test how close humanity is to achieving ascension on their own.

Spoiler:

((45 second recap of "Sojourn" and "Quid Pro Quo"))

Sitting by himself in a reopened bar somewhere in Greensboro, North Carolina, Jason Carter is celebrating his twenty-first birthday alone with a few rounds of beer. Seeing as all the friends he had prior to being plunged into the spotlight by the Trust ("A Family Affair") either died in the battle for Earth or are scattered elsewhere around the globe, he has no one left to share the day with. He sighs bitterly and gulps down his drink, signalling to the bartender for another. Playing with his empty glass while he waits, he levitates it above the counter, spinning it around in the air. When the barkeep slides down his next mug, he watches in astonishment for a long moment, then just shakes his head and walks away, apparently willing to accept anything now that he lives in a world with aliens and energy beings.

Jason reaches for the new glass and goes to take a swig when a familiar voice asks him if this is really how he wants to spend his birthday, all alone in a dark bar. The young genius turns to see his Samantha Carter, his ever-protective aunt, standing in the doorway, holding a small wrapped box. Her nephew allows himself a small smile, asking if she's being derelict of duty by coming so far out of New York to check up on him. Sam smiles back, but points out that she's commander of a starship with beaming capabilities now, so stopping by to say "Hello" isn't nearly as tedious as it used to be. And besides, her brother had been bugging her not to be such a stranger, and she can only tell Mark "No" so many times before she feels bad.

Laughing, Jason offers to buy her a drink, but Carter admits that she can't stay long, and has to be back on the Jupiter in just over an hour for a strike against a rogue Der'kal shipyard. In any event, she wanted to give him a small present, and she hands over the box she arrived with. Taking it and giving it a gentle shake, Jason tells Sam that she didn't need to get him anything, but she's adamant that he's deserves a little something after all that he's been through the past few years. He insists that she should have just saved the money, but he catches his breath when he finally tears away the last bit of wrapping. Inside the box is a piece of the shattered Pandora's Box, bringing back painful memories of the day when Jason used the device to destroy most of the alien fleet occupying Earth... and then collapsed from the strain, prompting Jack O'Neill to take the helm and make the ultimate sacrifice for his people ("Quid Pro Quo"). He honestly doesn't know what to say.

Taking the fragment, itself quite beautiful and intricate, Sam pulls out a metal chain and strings it through a hole at its top, explaining that she knows how much Jason beats himself up for what happened that day. And although he's the farthest thing from religious a young man could be, Sam also knows that since the Box drained away Jack's life in its use, maybe some part of him still lingers within it. Ever the realist, Jason can't resist pointing out how unlikely that is, but Carter puts her hand on his shoulder and tells him, for once, to trust something other than pure logic. He needs to find peace with himself and live again, not dwell in the past and blame himself for something that no one could have foreseen. Giving him a kiss on the cheek, Sam also suggests he do something other than let scientists run tests on his brain all day. He may have some impressive post-human abilities, but he is still human no matter how you want to look at it. With a final hug of encouragement, she leaves, telling the bartender to keep it to soda as she does.

An hour or so later, Jason is walking back across town to his parents' house, where he's been staying ever since he and his family came back to Earth. While he walks, he muses over what Sam had to say, and he admits that she may have a point; all he's done the last few months is sit in one lab or another and let researchers poke and prod him to try and unravel the mystery of his changed genetic code. Maybe it's time he did something a little more proactive, and it's not as if there's anything standing in his way. He could get a job as a scientist at the ISGC or even sign up for training on an SG team. As an attractive young woman jogs past, he turns and watches as she rounds a corner, muttering that he's so far from normal after what's happened to him that he should probably just give up ever having a relationship right now.

He heads down his own street, spying his house a short distance away, then freezes. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the brushes across the street moving against the wind, and he swears he just heard a twig snap behind him. Cursing that he decided not to bring a zat with him, even knowing that there may still be Der'kal wandering about on their own, he spins around and raises his hand, blasting part the trunk of a small tree and knocking back the armed man hiding behind it. Eyes widening, Jason grabs his cell phone and hits Sam's number, desperately hoping she picks up as he telekinetically hurls a nearby piece of scrap metal at a second man emerging from cover down the street. He manages to take down a third before he's finally hit by a zat blast from the side, just as neighbors begin emerging from their homes to look on in horror. A black van screeches to a halt in front of the unconscious young man, and his attackers pull him and their felled compatriots inside before speeding away for parts unknown. Rushing out from his own household, Mark Carter stares down the road at the vanishing automobile and pulls out his phone, hitting the speed dial for his sister.

Early in the morning the next day, SG-1 pulls up in front of the house in a military jeep, once again arriving to investigate the disappearance of one of its residents. They find Sam already waiting outside with her brother and sister-in-law, who she leaves for a brief moment to greet her old teammates. Getting out of the car, Daniel asks if they have any leads on who may have abducted Jason, but unfortunately, the police have thus far been unsuccessful in finding anything useful. Witnesses say that the kidnappers sped off in an unmarked, black van, but that's really the only thing they have to work with. Dr. Talbot's loaned them a crack ISGC forensics team, and they're sweeping the area now, but Sam admits that it doesn't look much was left behind.

Going over to the tree Jason blasted to bits, Mitchell whistles appreciatively, noting that it would take a Hell of a lot of force to splinter wood that thick. Looking over, Sam explains that when they were measuring the extent of the young man's abilities a year ago ("The Hidden"), he was able to punch through plates of pure steel. The last time she observed a test, he put a few dents in reinforced trinium. His powers are developing into something truly destructive, and, to be honest, she's received a few calls from the new President over the past month asking if it's safe to just let him walk around unwatched. At the time, she said it would be unnecessary, but she meant in the context of him abusing his abilities. Maybe if she had recommended a few guards keep an eye on him, this wouldn't have happened. Regardless, Eaton promises her that they'll find him and bring him home, and this will all be over soon enough.

While they talk, one of the forensics experts approaches and asks if he may interrupt. When Mitchell tells him to go ahead, he hands over a video camera a neighbor was using to film a home movie in their backyard during the abduction. At first, they didn't think anything of it, but after a closer inspection, they found that it revealed something quite interesting. Fast-forwarding to the end, he hits play just as he camera is pointed into the gap between the owner's house and the next. Just before the video cuts away, the kidnappers' van flashes by, and the forensics agent hits pause while it's in full view. It's an incredibly lucky find, but the usefulness of getting license plates nowadays is up for debate, considering that all the looting and scavenging during the Der'kal occupation has made it so no one is driving anything they themselves bought. The odds of Jason's abductors driving a van that's actually registered to one of them are hovering around zero, but they'll run it anyway. Sam says that she'll let the people back ISGC decide if there's anything noteworthy on the tape, and drops it into a nearby evidence bag.

While the other members of SG-1 fan out to talk to the witnesses, Daniel follows Sam towards the house to check on Mark and his wife. Grabbing her arm before heading inside, Jackson asks his old friend if she's alright, knowing how this must be making her feel. Smiling weakly, Carter admits that she can't help feeling that this is all her fault. After all, the only reason Jason was ever put in greater danger was because she decided his intelligence was enough to enlist him in the family business that is the Stargate Program at such a young age. But despite his genius, he was still just a teenager, and she should have remembered that. He could have had a normal life, but instead he has to deal with all this. Daniel just tells her to hang on, and says that they can deal with the future when this is all over, but for now, he suggests they put the blame game behind them. Hearing Mark calling for them inside, they go to see what they can do to help.

Elsewhere, Jason is just waking up, and immediately realizes that he's in way over his head; his arms and legs are strapped to a table, and it looks like he's locked inside an empty room. He struggles at his restraints for a moment, then takes a deep breath and tries to rip them off telekinetically, but finds that nothing's happening. More than a little horrified that the powers he's become so used to using aren't working, he shouts out and yells for whoever did this to at least give him the respect to speak face to face and explain themselves. And after a long moment, there's a loud thud from doorway, and the old, rusted lock slowly clicks open.

In walks an older man, probably in his early fifties, who is dressed in simple clothes emblazoned with a strange symbol Jason has never seen before, something that looks to be a combination of the Christian cross and Earth's point of origin. He has graying black hair and piercing blue eyes, but his kind smile seems rather disingenuous considering the zat gun holstered at his waist. Apologizing for the rather uncomfortable accommodations, the man introduces himself as Nathan Rivera, and he's been waiting to meet the young Carter for some time now. Not really interested in getting to know him, Jason asks him to just let him out of here, promising to do his best to keep his aunt from shooting this place up when she inevitably tracks him down. Rivera doesn't seem all that concerned with the ISGC, however, and he promises that by the time they locate them, if they can at all, they'll be more than ready.

(Beginning of "Paragon," see next two posts for more.)

[s09119]

(More of "Paragon," see previous post for beginning and next post for end.)

Spoiler:

Walking around to the other side of the room, he picks something up from a nearby table and says that there is a perfectly logical reason why his "guest" can't seem to use his fantastic powers. When Earth fell to the Der'kal, many caches of alien-inspired technology were left open and unguarded. And as such, he and his followers were able to pick up quite a few interesting trinkets, one being the anti-Prior device that Samantha Carter and Bill Lee developed to fight the Ori ("The Fourth Horseman, Part 1"). With it active, Jason won't be going anywhere, and Rivera and his people will have all the time in the world to usher in the "great awakening." Their adolscent captive seems less than enthusasic, however, and he mutters that they can torment him all he wants, but he's not giving them anything. Nathan, however, doesn't appear to think Jason's reluctance to play along will matter much in the end. Holding up the Goa'uld torture stick he grabbed earlier, he shoves it down on the youth's chest, shouting that he will not allow the "plan of the gods" to be held up, no matter what.

Back in Greensboro, Sam is still at the Carter house when her cell phone rings, and she glances down to see it's Mitchell calling. Smiling apologetically at Mark, she excuses herself for a moment and steps out onto the porch, asking what's up. Cameron and the rest of the team are waiting at the ISGC for one final round of tests on the evidence they collected, but he wanted her to know that they've already found something. One of their video analysts was able to enhance the home movie footage they picked up well enough to make out the arm of a kidnapper through the window. His sleeve looks to have been torn off in the scuffle surrounding Jason's kidnapping, revealing a partial tattoo underneath. After running the image through a number of criminal databases, they finally got a hit off a religious sect that had been under watch by the CIA since shortly after the Stargate Program went public.

Taking over, Daniel says that cult calls itself the Ascendant, and they're led by a businessman-turned-evangelical named Nathan Rivera. Apparently, he was swept up in the tide of Origin when word of the new religion finally got out to the general public, but his brand is a rather unusual twist on the faith. According to Ascendant ideology, it is the duty of the faithful to reject the corrupted position of the Ori. Instead, they see the Ancients as the true gods, ones who triumphed over their evil brethren and finally cast them down ("Amazing Grace"). Rivera indoctrinated his followers in the mindset that the Ancients seeded a pure human race, but that purity has gradually been diluted by the spreading of mankind across thousands of planets and the creation of other species from the human mold, such as the Jaffa. He went on to prophesize the eventually emergence of a "human bridge" between the mortal and ascended planes of existence, and that said bridge would bring about an awakening of humanity to its greater destiny.

Sam doesn't like the sound of that, and she can see how someone with the abilities of a Prior like Jason would look like the mix of human and Ancient that the cult was looking for. That would definitely explain why he was targeted, but it doesn't quite explain what they want him for. She asks if the database has any details on what, exactly, Rivera meant by an "awakening," but Daniel says that the CIA was just starting to dig deeper when their resources were reallocated to dealing with China over their attempts to hold up construction of the Jupiter ("The First Amendment"). They never got back to their investigation before the Der'kal attacked, and so the record is essentially incomplete. That said, they're checking with the other major intelligence databanks for any location that may have been assigned to the cult, and they'll check back with Sam when they have something.

At the Ascendant compound, Rivera now has one of his followers torturing Jason with the pain stick while he himself looks over a readout of the young man's vital signs with each prod. Screaming at the torment, Jason demands to know what they could possibly find so interesting about the fact that agony does, in fact, cause his heart rate to skyrocket. Chuckling, Nathan explains that this not torture at all, but science! The body is a miraculous creation, but the gods designed it to be the trigger of a weapon, not the weapon itself. Electrical impulses are all that's required to do anything and everything, from picking up a spoon to telekinetically snapping someone's neck, and he's helping Jason to unlock the gods' gift within him; electrodes have been placed at the points around his brain where ISGC records say evolved abilities are activated, and they have wires connecting them to a thin metal conducting band wrapped around his torso to channel in all the electrical energy they need. Once he has passed a certain threshold, he can bring about the final judgment of Man and join the Ancients, who will then come and rescue the pure and raise them up.

Gritting his teeth and biting back tears as the pin stick is jabbed into his stomach, Jason points out that it doesn't matter if they can get his powers to manifest on their command, as they can't turn off the anti-Prior device without him throwing them all through the roof with his mind. But that's where Rivera again has to thank the unguarded information vaults lying around during Der'kal occupation, as he found that Priors were able to overcome the device with enough of a stimulus, and once they find just the right level of electricity needed in just the right spot, they'll be able to activate his abilities with the field up or not. Jason will continue to find he can't use them himself, but that's none of Rivera's concern. They'll just send the appropriate jolt, and next thing you know, a few city blocks will be toppling down.

Shocked, Jason realizes that's what he meant by a "great awakening." He doesn't want to just show off his abilities for all to see and bow down, he wants to actually start slaughtering thousands of people as some sort of proof for the Ancients that humanity is ready. Clapping his hands together, Rivera is delighted that he's finally seeing the big picture. The nonbelievers will come and kill Jason after he's done that, of course, but he will be able to ascend and tell the gods to come bring their chosen ones up to paradise with them. They punished humanity for not producing a bridge to their plane sooner by sending the scourge that was the Der'kal, and Rivera is convinced that he can now show them that mankind has learned. While Jason looks on in horror, the viewpoint pulls back through the roof of the building, revealing it to be in an abandoned industrial center smack in the middle of a rebuilding and unsuspecting London.

At the ISGC, Dr. Talbot is in the gym working on some martial arts practice when Eaton stops by to get in a workout herself. Spotting her from across the room, Danielle waves her over, asking if SG-1 has come up with any new leads for tracking down Jason. Eaton glumly replies that they haven't cracked the case yet, but Daniel's doing his best to scour every book on religious cults he has, hoping history will give them a clue as to Rivera's plan. Mitchell and Vala are in the middle of a teleconference with the White House, hoping maybe the President can pull some strings that they can't, but it's unlikely Washington knows anything more than they do.

Honestly, though, Talbot can't seem to understand how they managed to pull off a kidnapping at all. After all, Jason has a slew of post-human abilities that make him one incredible warrior, and she finds it hard to believe that he wouldn't have found a way to escape already. Rebbecca says that it's been a puzzle to her, as well, as the only way she can think they'd keep him locked up is by inhibiting his powers. But they don't have access to that kind of technology, as only an anti-Prior device could do that. As soon as she says it, however, both she and Talbot freeze and glance at one another, remembering how the technology developed by the ISGC prior to the Fall of Earth was largely unprotected for a year and a half. It's possible that, somehow, the Ascendant cultists were able to salvage one of the devices for themselves after hearing about Jason, and if so, they'd have a way to keep him in captivity indefinitely. And that gives Eaton an idea. Telling Talbot that she's most-definitely a genius, she slaps her on the back and rushes back out of the gym, shouting for someone to call page SG-1 to the briefing room.

A half hour later, Carter is beaming onto the Jupiter, immediately ordering the closest officer to ready the scanners for a sensor sweep of Earth. A monitor on the wall flickers to life as a transmission comes in from the ISGC, and Dr. Bill Lee's face appears a moment after, telling Sam that he's uploading the relevant files to the ship's computer now. The requested data, in this case, happens to be the EM signature emitted by a Prior disruptor when active, which should lead them right to the Ascendant if Talbot and Eaton's theory proves correct. Sam mutters that she wishes she'd thought of the obvious counter-measure to Jason's ability to escape sooner, but then again, she can hardly blame herself when she was preoccupied with consoling her brother. Sliding into her command chair, she orders the sensors to start the scan, radioing SG-1, prepped and ready for deployment, to be prepared for beaming the second they have a lock.

It only takes a minute for the background noise of Earth's telecommunications to be filtered out, and it's not long before they have a fix on a location flooded with the EM field they're looking for. Looking over the map, Sam grimaces, remarking that their cultists seem to be holed up in downtown London, but wishes SG-1 good luck anyway and has them transported over, not knowing how much time they have left. Outside the sect's compound, a few of the members are patrolling with zats and handguns, and are taken quite by surprise when a foursome of heavily-armed soldiers materialize in front of them. They're dispatched quickly and easily, and Mitchell leads his team inside, following the Jupiter's GPS fix on where, exactly, Jason is being held.

Deeper inside, Rivera is on the verge of shedding tears of joy; they have calibrated the electrical frequency they need to 96% accuracy, and they're only minutes away from the beginning of the great awakening that he has so long prepared for. At that moment, the first echoes of bullets can be heard down the hall, though, and Nathan glares at Jason, demanding to know how they were located. Smirking, the young man guesses that powering up their anti-Prior device for so long created one heck of an electromagnetic beacon, and it was probably an easy matter of scanning for the anomaly and sending in the troops.

[s09119]

(End of "Paragon," see previous two posts for beginning.)

Spoiler:

Unable to accept that his dreams could be torn to shreds so easily, Rivera grabs the torture stick from his underling, telling him to go fight off the heathens, and recalibrates the settings one last time. He unlocks Jason's hands and feet and drags his weakened body off the table, slamming the Goa'uld device into his back until, amazingly, a few small objects around the room begin to float. He tweaks the dial one more time, and the table flies up into the ceiling for a moment before crashing back down to the floor. The "prophet" is overjoyed, shouting in triumph that the moment has finally come where humanity's destiny can finally be achieved.

Down the corridor, SG-1 is pinned down by a handful of cultists, and Vala yells that they need to get out of this position or they're just going to be stuck for the foreseeable future. Shrugging, Mitchell takes the initiative and pulls out a grenade, tossing it right into the middle of their enemies. Eaton lets out a yell that they're in way too close of quarters to do that, and the cult members scatter to avoid the blast... but the blast never comes, and Cameron races through the temporary opening, grabbing the grenade as he goes, and yells back that he never pulled the pin. Watching him go, but again pinned down by the recovering cultists, Eaton just stares in disbelief and says that she's going to give him one Hell of a slap in the face when this is over.

Mitchell sprints down the hall and around a bend, spotting the target and relieved that it has only a single guard. He takes him down with a straight shot to the chest, then runs through the doorway and spots Rivera holding Jason with a gun to his head and the torture device just behind his back. The sect leader tells Cameron to back off now and not to interfere, but Mitchell's not backing down. He takes a step forward, raising his P90, and Nathan jabs at Jason with the pain stick, unleashing a wave of telekinetic energy that slams the Colonel back into the wall with enough force to knock him out cold. Then, knowing this is his chance, he shoots the Prior inhibitor, knocking the EM field offline, and cranks up the torture stick to its highest setting, causing the entire building to shake violently. Jason, unable to get a grip on his own abilities, closes his eyes, concentrating with all his might.

All around London, buildings begin to vibrate, and small objects across the city start to levitate. In the industrial complex, Daniel notes the start of a massive event building, and he shouts that they need to get to Jason now before he brings down the entire area with his powers. But they can't get past this opposition, and Vala asks Sam if she can beam them around the standoff. Carter replies that she'll do it as soon as the beaming sensors get a lock, and asks them to wait just a few more seconds.

But then, as suddenly as the shaking began, it stops. The Jupiter gets its lock and beams SG-1 to the other side of the room, where they easily incapacitate the cultists before running after Mitchell. They're surprised to arrive to find their commander unconscious on the floor and Rivera standing alone with his gun in hand, looking very confused and disheartened. Upon seeing them, he makes as if to get a shot off, but Vala zats him before he can do anything and looks around, wondering where Jason is. Over the radio, Sam reports that they're scanning the whole area and aren't seeing any life signs not already accounted for, and they have no idea where their prisoner is. Frowning, Eaton asks what in the world's going on, but Daniel thinks he knows, and just tells everyone to wait.

A moment later, a bright white light fills the room, and the three conscious members of SG-1 shield their eyes until it subsides. When they can see again, Jason's standing in the middle of the room, quickly grabbing a metal tray off the floor and holding it over his lower body. Blushing, he asks if someone can grab him some clothes, and Daniel pulls off his jacket, laughing that he's been through this whole routine before.

A few hours later, SG-1 joins Sam outside outside the Carter house to see Jason happily reunited with his family. Daniel still can't believe that Jason was able to force himself into ascension like that, but given just how close he was before, maybe it's not so surprising that he could do it in a pinch. The young man just shrugs, admitting that he didn't know if he could do it, but when he realized that he couldn't get his powers under control in time to avoid bringing all of London crashing down, he decided it didn't hurt to try. And even though retaking human form seems to have stripped him of his abilities, he's okay with that. An ISGC blood test confirmed that he still has the Ancient gene and all of his genius-level intelligence, and now maybe he can go about having a normal life without having to worry that he'll accidentally throw someone into space when he's angry.

Mitchell, on behalf of his entire team, says he's glad everything worked out for the best, then breaks off to give Sam a moment alone with her family. Mark thanks his sister for everything she and her people did, but she reminds him that the real hero here isn't her, but his son. Jason, for his part, is just happy his time as the planet's most-perfect human has come to a close, and he tells Sam that he's glad he gave her the gift she did. Fingering the shattered piece of Pandora's Box, he says that being ascended, even for as brief a time as he was, showed him that there is something to life after death. And that, more than anything else, gives him some small measure of hope.

[Rudy Pena]

Very very good. I loved it.

[boeli]

the grenade thing remembered me of BSG with Kara and Sam

[thekillman]

ingenious trick with the grenade.

[Rudy Pena]

the grenade thing remembered me of BSG with Kara and Sam

I think thats where he got it from.

[s09119]

I think thats where he got it from.

Indeed it is I had something far less interesting there before, and was going over it before I posted and decided that the grenade trick is just so much more effective from a humor and getting-the-job-done standpoint.

[Rudy Pena]

Indeed it is I had something far less interesting there before, and was going over it before I posted and decided that the grenade trick is just so much more effective from a humor and getting-the-job-done standpoint.

Thats nice, I'm glad you put it in.

[bradly08]

IMO it wasn't your best episode. It just did have that appeal that so many of your other episodes had. It just didn't grab my attention, and it was the first thing your wrote were I actually skimmed read it at first.

Overall your work is miles ahead of alot of other writers, I just think that with this series, you seem to me to be writing alot of filler episodes (Some such as, the forerunners were good). Im not sure if you plan to reveal some kind of overall story arc for this series at a later point, or not but I hope you take this under consideration.

And I also hope your devoted followers don't hunt me down as a non-beilever

[s09119]

IMO it wasn't your best episode. It just did have that appeal that so many of your other episodes had. It just didn't grab my attention, and it was the first thing your wrote were I actually skimmed read it at first.

Overall your work is miles ahead of alot of other writers, I just think that with this series, you seem to me to be writing alot of filler episodes (Some such as, the forerunners were good). Im not sure if you plan to reveal some kind of overall story arc for this series at a later point, or not but I hope you take this under consideration.

And I also hope your devoted followers don't hunt me down as a non-beilever

To be fair, the series as a whole is just about over. Seasons 12-15 were the whole Der'kal Invasion arc, and Season 16 is just tying up all the loose ends. I guess the main plot for S16 is the Alliance finishing off the Aschen, dealing with the rogue Der'kal, and asserting itself as the main galactic power again. But no, there isn't going to be anything as solid as a war arc or something, just because that's already passed. This season is really going to see SG-1 come to terms with what their futures will hold.

Atlantis, on the other hand, will have a massive arc when I start, one that I hope will really bring back the fear factor the Wraith had at their introduction.

[JamesPeterson]

I don't think it's arc-less. Half the episodes so far have dealt with the Aschen in some way, after all. Wasn't it rather common in the original shows to have a season only have half its episodes devoted to moving the plot along?

[thekillman]

there are dozens of arcs this seasons, all of which more or less come to a halt. from Pandoras box to jason to Janus, etc etc etc.