Insiders (1004)

[Agent_Dark]

Yes, refuse to give him the codes. It really is that simple. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the safety of the whole galaxy. She is a soldier, she would have, should have understood that. She didn't even stall or try to come up with some way to trick Ba'al, she just gave in! I mean, her little trick to make the download longer? What was that? So instead of it taking 5 seconds it took 15 seconds? That was the best she could come up with? She didn't even try.

Well considering that had a few more seconds passed, the symbiote poison would have taken out the Ba'als before they escaped... I say she got pretty damm close to sucessfully stalling for time.

[Orion's Star]

Well considering that had a few more seconds passed, the symbiote poison would have taken out the Ba'als before they escaped... I say she got pretty damm close to sucessfully stalling for time.

No it didn't. Ba'al(s) was able to get the data, then attack Mitchell and company, put up a successful resistance long enough for all the Ba'als to regroup, and then escape. That was not just a few seconds after Sam giving over the data, that was several minutes.

[L.A. Doyle]

i think it was written more as a plot device than any refelection on her character.

I think you're right. It wouldn't be the first time a character was sacrificed in order to move a plot along. And it could have been any one of them. This week just happened to be Sam.

[Agent_Dark]

No it didn't. Ba'al(s) was able to get the data, then attack Mitchell and company, put up a successful resistance long enough for all the Ba'als to regroup, and then escape. That was not just a few seconds after Sam giving over the data, that was several minutes.

No, you misunderstood. The poison was seconds away from entering the room where the Ba'als had congregated to be beamed out. Which means Sam's stall tactic from earlier very nearly worked.

And really, I'm not sure where anyone gets the idea that Sam would allow Ba'al to kill hostages. She quite willingly put her own life on the line but had to stall for time when Ba'al threatened the hostages instead, under the impression that he wasn't going to be able to escape so easily. You know, none of this would have happened if the SGC hadn't had such poor security measures in the first place. The SF letting Barrett into the Interrogation Room by himself? The rather inneffective lockdown?

And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, the entire point behind Ba'al's little party at teh SGC was to get the list of gate addresses. I can't imagine that something as mundane as a refusal to give an access code would have stopped him.

[freetoken]

Perhaps for other viewers such as myself, who has seen all of the SG-1 episodes to date, the key problem is that ep1004 doesn't get anywhere but mostly retreads old ground. For example:

- AT stated her desire to keep her character out of 'ships, but what do we have here but another Carter luster (agent Barrett.)

- the one and only highly trusted US gov't secret agent, Barrett, is now suspect and no longer can be an honest protagonist. He will always be suspect. That brings up the whole NID-can't-be-trusted meme. The problem here is that writers have too many balls in the air - too many "arcs" if you will, and not enough time to deal with them.

- still no strong leader of the team who could act as a focus for rallying our (the viewers') empathies ; no single person around which we (the viewers) can anchor our attention as being THE focus of action. The SG-1 television program is still more an action fiction than a relationship fiction, and if the action is not clear but haphazard, as in this episode, we are left wondering how this or that specific action occurred, as in this episode (ex: how quickly all the Baals got out.) We (the viewers) NEED focus to keep our attention, and it must be logical, and one of the best (and perhaps easiest) ways to do that is have our eyes on one main person, or to see the world through that one person's eyes. I think this is a really important point to stress - when trying to absorb a story in 45 minutes we need to focus, and not distract our attention.


- Yet another example of why CJ is now redundant on the set. There are too many characters for approx 45 minute episodes. In the last encounter of Baal and Teal'c they tried to kill each other (again), but here Teal'c is almost emotionless and non-existent.

- use of cliche lines (which have been also used in other episodes), such as the "Are you thinking what I'm thinking" utterance by Carter when she is alone with Vala. That scene would have been so much more effective if Carter had just looked at Vala and nodded her head - we don't need the redundant cliche!

Yup, I guess I'm one of those who is growing more and more sour on the writers. The actors are fine, the camera work is fine. We are missing some music, though... What is missing most are: (1) the writing of some deeper dialogue, and (2) clarification of plot, and (3) the bigger picture (i.e., what does all of this mean for us, the viewer.)

[Orion's Star]

No, you misunderstood. The poison was seconds away from entering the room where the Ba'als had congregated to be beamed out. Which means Sam's stall tactic from earlier very nearly worked.

And really, I'm not sure where anyone gets the idea that Sam would allow Ba'al to kill hostages. She quite willingly put her own life on the line but had to stall for time when Ba'al threatened the hostages instead, under the impression that he wasn't going to be able to escape so easily. You know, none of this would have happened if the SGC hadn't had such poor security measures in the first place. The SF letting Barrett into the Interrogation Room by himself? The rather inneffective lockdown?

And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, the entire point behind Ba'al's little party at teh SGC was to get the list of gate addresses. I can't imagine that something as mundane as a refusal to give an access code would have stopped him.

I agree with you about the crappy security creating the situation in the first place. My first post in this thread mentioned the stupidity of the guard. But look, Sam is supposed to be a USAF officer and while I know this is TV, I really don't think any credible officer in the USAF would have ever given up the data, regardless if they thought that the people they were giving the data up to could never get away.

[White Knight]

I thought this was the best episode yet of Season 10. I already wrote a lengthy review and don't want to repeat everything, so I'll just summarise:

* Alan McCullough!
* Baal!
* Vala's going a long way towards becoming a part of the team. I hope that continues.
* The right balance of humour and drama, with a definate emphasis on humour in the beginning that shifted towards a tense, dramatic emphasis in the end.
* Some fantastic team-building.
* "I don't think anyone's in charge." Good to be clear.
* The action scenes earlier in the episode were exciting and fun to watch, but the ones at the end had a tension and a Die Hard quality to them.
* I don't know what I enjoyed more, Carter failing to come up with a solution or Dr Lee succeeding to.
* Barrett being under the Baals' control was a little predictable - at least, I saw it coming.
* Excellent use of the 'show, don't tell' principle, especially in the teaser and with the Baal hunt (when we see SG-1 catch a couple of Baals and then hear that while they were gone SG-12 caught two as well, its not as much of a stretch as "Every time one of these dots goes out the Replicators have invaded and destroyed a mothership").

And excellent, excellent episode. I gave it a 9 out of 10.

[Agent_Dark]

I agree with you about the crappy security creating the situation in the first place. My first post in this thread mentioned the stupidity of the guard. But look, Sam is supposed to be a USAF officer and while I know this is TV, I really don't think any credible officer in the USAF would have ever given up the data, regardless if they thought that the people they were giving the data up to could never get away.

I really dont think any credible officer in the USAF would allow themselves or fellow comrades to be needlessly killed either. Carter had another way - and it very nearly worked.

[numpty]

Although I'm not fan of the notion, a bit of encouragement for the Barrett as Baal camp - in Fallout it is established that Baal and his minions have a drug which masks the Naquada 'smell', thus allowing a Goa'uld to worm her way into Jonas'...affections.

Not a fan as I think a fair proportion of Baal's appeal is his rather dishy host!

[White Knight]

numpty, I suspected that Barrett had a cloned Baal symbiote in him.

[Watt]

Just got through watching this interesting Ep.
It was good to see Daniel not there and allow Vala to come through. As I have posted before it was getting tiresome seeing Daniel manhandle Vala about and she simply wasn't allowed to develop her character. Now if only she would get over this childish crush on Daniel then we can see some of her strengths show through.
Vala leading a squad as a probationer? Well it wouldn't really happen but I guess as SG1 is the lead team maybe the respect that the soldiers shared for the original SG1 still held (IE Sg1 saved the planet 7 times? well maybe they do know what they are doing lol) This is TV so things do happen that normally wouldn't. Despite the rather "unique" way Vala does things she did ok and I reckon she'll get to know the boundries in time. WOuld love to see her go through some weapons training for SG1 though. Vala wanted her chance top prove herself and she did ok.
Cam is quite open in acknowledgement that the uniquness of SG1 is it's strength and as a good leader he goes along with that.
Carter and giving the codes (SIGH) another of her weak decisions. This babe folded like a wet rag at even the suggestion of killing the hostages.
Years ago on my very first assignment in real life I had a female OIC and she was great even years later if I get a choice to work with a female OIC or a male one I will 9-10 times pick a female OIC so I'm not against ladies leading but I am against ladies who are weak leaders, same as males, and Carter is one of the weakest leaders I have ever seen.
We have to face the fact that Carter only got to be LTC because Jack Oneil had the hots for her. Simple as, end of story. Oneils very first order of business was to promote her.
The replicant Carter that she allowed to manipulate her and the fact she blew the most well kept secret in the world to her stalker XBF Pete after only dating him for about a month or so shows how bad this lady is at leadership.
Bust her back to Major and let Cam lead.
Should she have entered the access codes? No, under no circumstances do you allow classified info of that importance to be accessed in that situation. Depending on the type of info it may also require more than one access code to access the data.
In my experience under that tight timeframe, and they were on a very tight timeframe there, you stall, stall, stall and if you lose a hostage or two you deal with it later. The bigger picture here is losing billions upon billions of lives for 6 hostages. There are such things as no hostage clauses and it's usually fairly well understood for the field guys what happens if you do get taken hostage, but the point is that she folded like a wet rag immediately even knowing the consequenses of allowing access to those codes.
Sam is no leader.
Nough said

[coconutt2000]

This was a frustratingly stupid episode.

Ba'al shows up. This is a clear indicator that they should be on their guard. Instead they fall right into his trap.

Things they knew:

1) Ba'al is a multi-step thinker.
2) Ba'al wanted the information in the Cheyenne Mtn. facility's computer.
3) Ba'al wanted his clones killed.

Things they knew after they captured the second Ba'al:

1) They had to capture all the Ba'als to figure out which one was the real one.
2) They didn't know which one was the real one.

Now, it was obvious that as soon as they realized they needed to take the Ba'al clones into custody, they should've asked themselves if this was precisely what the first Ba'al had intended. It was the first thing that occurred to me.

Once they had two Ba'als in custody it doesn't take a leap of logic to decide that the best method of controlling the situation was to increase the distance between the Ba'als and what the data they wanted. Personally, I felt that they should've backed up the real data and substituted a corrupted version of the data into the computers, on the off chance that the Ba'als had a chance to get at the data. This occurred to me when the first Ba'al expressed interest in the data.

Then there's the security guard who let the NID agent into the interrogation chamber. That shouldn't have happened. NID has no military authority, and the guards would've been briefed on who had access. The guard should've called in for instructions before letting Barrett anywhere near the prisoners.

As soon as the first Ba'al escaped from his holding cell, the second order after ordering the security teams to respond should've been to lock down the database and take the pertinent data offline. Disconnecting the computer network via the routers to the affected levels should've been done as well, to further ensure that the data wouldn't be taken.

The whole thing with the anti-symbiote poison was a waste of time. The anti-symbiote poison should've been part of the base defense systems, and it should've been weaponized into grenades. But as soon as they had a Go'auld on the base, the first thing they should've done was station men at the relevant ventilation points to pump the gas into the system.

------------------

Now, I favor the use of a corrupted data set. The reason is simply that if things got so out of control that the Ba'als escaped custody and gained access to the computers, they'd get what they wanted and leave without taking a hostage with them. One of the dangers in blocking an enemy's stratagem without providing a controlled escape route is that the enemy will revert to killing indiscriminately. Thus, assuming that the Ba'als took hostages, having a corrupted data set online for them to steal would've been a way to defuse the situation, and sucker the Ba'als into believing they'd succeeded.

Toward the end of the episode, Carter catches up with the Ba'als just before they beamed out. Instead of opening fire immediately, they pause and give the Ba'als a chance to escape. Granted, none of them thought that the Ba'als could escape, but given their past experiences with Ba'al, it boggles the mind that they'd assume that he wouldn't have an escape plan that trumps their abilities to keep the clones imprisoned. They should've had a last ditch plan to kill all the Ba'als. One other thing that occurred to me when I saw the first Ba'al was that they should attach an explosive ankle bracelet, or while the Ba'als are knocked out - install another locater beacon. Also, if they'd had the symbiote gas in grenade form, they could've tossed a grenade into the room after all the Ba'als had assembled, before running into the room. Heck, a flash bang would've been a pretty neat trick too. Who runs into a room full of armed enemy combatants without a twitchy trigger finger anyhow?

Like I said, while I like Stargate and watch it religiously, the writers are allowing the Stargate command to make too many mistakes. Mistakes that I see as easily avoidable are being made in an effort to move the story along.

----------------

I forgot one more thing. I said earlier in this post that as soon as they knew what Ba'al was after, they should've increased the distance between him and what he was after. I already covered the part about protecting the data. The other option that occurred to me immediately upon the first Ba'als capture was that he should've been transferred, blind folded, to temporary holding facility on another planet.

Stargate command should be establishing forward bases throughout the galaxy. Basically small, concrete bunkers hidden near or with stargates on unpopulated planets, with emergency supplies. We all remember the use of a program used to adapt a gate dialer that stored unauthorized incoming objects and redialed the gate and sent the stored objects/people to a new address. The authorization would be embedded in the same signal used to identify SG teams.

Another problem I have with Stargate command procedures is their use Earth as the primary gate. All non-emergency traffic should be funneled through off world, forward bases. Heck, even emergency traffic should be sent to off world collection points.

Then there's the whole Ba'al/Anubis plan to set up an independent gate network. Why doesn't Stargate command grab a few unused gates and set up a fire walled network off the grid. Make it so that the only gate that can dial the new network is the Earth gate, and only by using a special dialing computer that isn't linked to the primary dialing computer.

[Agent_Dark]

We have to face the fact that Carter only got to be LTC because Jack Oneil had the hots for her. Simple as, end of story. Oneils very first order of business was to promote her.

Never mind the fact that not only did her promotions fall under a normal promotion cycle, but that officer promotions are handled through the Pentagon and not any individual...

The bigger picture here is losing billions upon billions of lives for 6 hostages.

You mean Ascended beings right? Because this weapon does not kill humans. It doesn't kill any physical being for that matter. It destroys Ascended Ori and Ascended Ancients. The Ancients are big boys - I'm sure they can look after themselves. And we were going to use it on the Ori anyway...

There are such things as no hostage clauses and it's usually fairly well understood for the field guys what happens if you do get taken hostage

You mean like 'never leave a man behind' and all that? Can't be too good for morale if the official policy is 'get caught and you're on your own buddy'. Also note that these people were not 'field guys', but people stationed at a Military Base on US soil.

Carter never folded, not by any means. She did what she did to prevent the deaths of comrades. She was also counting on the fact that the rest of the SGC forces would be there stop the Ba'al's from escaping. If they were really concerned about Ba'al gaining access to that information (which they clearly knew he had knowledge about), maybe they should have stormed the room instead of waiting around?

[DEM]

This was a frustratingly stupid episode.

Agreed. We're living in the age of Bizarro SGC. Like your detailed analysis. Well done!

I also applaud Agent_Dark's posts. Taking the shoddiness of the plotting as a given,

I really dont think any credible officer in the USAF would allow themselves or fellow comrades to be needlessly killed either. Carter had another way - and it very nearly worked.

The only reason it did NOT work was because the writers decided that -- surprise! -- symbiote poison is no longer highly potent, highly diffuse, and instantaneously lethal.

[keshou]

Well last week I kind of fell "in love" with the show again.

This week.....kind of a let down.

There were a few nice character beats as they continue to integrate Vala into the team. But otherwise it wasn't that exciting a story for me. I was flipping around with the remote and forgetting to change back so that's never a good sign.

Random comments......

I agree that the characterization of Vala seems a little schizophrenic from week to week. For what it's worth, I thought they hit some pretty good notes for her in this episode. And much better hair for an "SG-1" member than the pigtails she's been sporting. Vala continues to bring some much-needed energy to the show.

I was waiting for Barrett to have been snaked and was disappointed it was only brainwashing.

As for Sam. The writers have used the characters to give up key information before in vital situations if it fits their needs for future episodes. Daniel in the "omg, they shot my coffee cup!" episode comes to mind.

They need to have Ba'al and the Ba'alettes as an antagonist to race them to Merlin's weapon so Ba'al gets the list of gate addresses. I thought Sam had a pretty good reason to believe they might be able to contain Ba'al so I didn't think it was that bad. Except for the sad lack of any emotion or drama in those scenes. I remember the awesome Sam/Ba'al scenes in Reckoning II.....these were just kind of blah.

I used to love Ba'al but don't find the whole clone storyline to be that interesting. Other than giving me an opportunity to roll my eyes at all the "Ba'al" jokes.

And what's up with Teal'c this season? I'm getting the feeling they're keeping CJ around to keep everyone on the set happy and laughing. Because they're sure not doing much with his character so far.

I gave last week's episode an 8 out of 10.

Insiders gets a 5.