Off The Grid (916)

[Zoser]

Back in season 6 there was an episode that started the whole tretonin thing. They were using a symbiote queen to create offspring that had no genetic memory and were blank slates.

Later on we find out that Anubis is creating symbiotes that are pretty much the same kind of blank slate and can be controlled. The next logical step would be for Ba'al to find a way to create symbiotes that are blank slates and imprint them with his memories/personality and then place them in the cloned bodies of his host.

Marla

If they all have Ba'al's personility wouldn't they vie for dominance?

[Deejay435]

Back in season 6 there was an episode that started the whole tretonin thing. They were using a symbiote queen to create offspring that had no genetic memory and were blank slates.

Later on we find out that Anubis is creating symbiotes that are pretty much the same kind of blank slate and can be controlled. The next logical step would be for Ba'al to find a way to create symbiotes that are blank slates and imprint them with his memories/personality and then place them in the cloned bodies of his host.

Marla

Hmmm. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes the clone storyline a bit easier for me to swallow. Thanks.

[Dani347]

someone mentioned how teal'c was the only one who showed no signs of a hbeating on the planet i think i know why teal'c didnt say a word so they didnt get annoyed with him

So that's why he went all Rambo on the ship. He had all that pent up energy from holding his comments in earlier.

[GateAngel]

So I guess we're supposed to assume that Ba'al's original host was pretty darned evil too, since if he hasn't cloned the symbiote to control the host, there's nothing keeping the host from rebelling? I honestly don't know, it's one of the things that annoy me about this whole cloned Ba'al thing.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on what non-cloned symbiotes means to the cloned hosts?

Back in season 6 there was an episode that started the whole tretonin thing. They were using a symbiote queen to create offspring that had no genetic memory and were blank slates.

Later on we find out that Anubis is creating symbiotes that are pretty much the same kind of blank slate and can be controlled. The next logical step would be for Ba'al to find a way to create symbiotes that are blank slates and imprint them with his memories/personality and then place them in the cloned bodies of his host.

Marla

[dosed150]

someone mentioned how teal'c was the only one who showed no signs of a hbeating on the planet i think i know why teal'c didnt say a word so they didnt get annoyed with him

[ShardsofGlass]

I completely agree with Randy. The beam-up in OTG was not an example of Deus Ex Machina because we knew the Odyssey was on their way to save them and because we knew they had subdermal tracking things on them and because we knew about the beam-up technology. If we didn't know any of those things and the SG-1 team was just suddenly beamed up without any foreshadowing, then that would be Deus Ex Machina. Obviously the writers had them beamed up at the last possible moment for dramatic and humorous effect, but that doesn't make it Deus Ex Machina.

[randy]

Because the Daedalus appeared miraculously in the nick of time to save Atlantis, just as the Odyssey appeared miraculously in the nick of tine to save SG1. No indication had been given previously in either case that such a rescue cold be possible.

So the deus ex machina call is valid.

Respectfully, I will have to disagree. The situation, relatively speaking, is based on perspective. We the viewers see the overall picture. Your assertion would valid if the show never displayed scenes referring to the Odyssey prior to the rescue of SG-1. The most crucial thing to remember about Deus ex Machina is its basis on unexpected contingencies; the events that are unknown beforehand, or no hint. When Landry conferred with the captain of the Odyssey in dealing with the extraction of SG-1 (from their predicament) it gave an inclination to their presence. In this case, we knew the Odyssey was on route to the planet where SG-1 was detained. I would earnestly agree with you, by constrast, if Odyssey had inexplicably arrived on location, not apprising us with their arrival earlier on - almost providential. Granted, the device did solve a minor conflict (for ovbvious reasons) the imminent death of SG-1. I suspect they used this to enhance the effect of the scene. However, the scene did not solve the focal point - the retrieval of the Stargates and reasons for the theft. From precedent, we have seen the utilization of beaming technology to purge people from specific locations. Moreover, SG-1's capitulation after being out guned caused no means of escape after the Stargate mysteriously vanished. So, it is just as improbable for SG-1 escaping from armed men as it is being beamed aboard Odyssey before their capturers could fire. Basically, there is no logical way for them to escape without intervention by an extraneous circumstance - the Odyssey. Also, the chips that were previously embedded on SG-1 which preceded their departure further affirmed logic - they were able to be beamed onto the Odyssey.

[binkpmmc]

My theory is he moved onto a splinter while saying the line from the prop bench which they were all sitting on which caused his loud response.
Everyone has a bad day now and then so it would be unfair to condem him for one thing in one episode, and as for the other bad points hopefully the writers and everyone picked up on them when they saw the final episode and try not to repeat them in the future (or incurr the wrath of us viewers!).

If this was the only bad instance I might be willing to write it off but it is not, at least it's not for me. I thought he was okay in FS, I actually liked FS seasons 1-3, here (as in the show) - not so good (not even close).

[Deejay435]

Cloning the symbiote would be the easy way out but we don't even know if it could be done. For one it would have meant Ba'als host would have been 'free' for a small period of time while the symbiote was being cloned,something ba'al could not do alown.
Also the cloned Anubis didn't have a symbiote, yet it retained the memories of Anubis, Nerus looked a bit shocked when he saw the clones but when he met Ba'al when he arrived he didn't comment on the fact he couldn't detect a symbiote despite greeting Ba'al and being around long enough to realise if a symbiote was not present.
Bit inconclusive really...

So I guess we're supposed to assume that Ba'al's original host was pretty darned evil too, since if he hasn't cloned the symbiote to control the host, there's nothing keeping the host from rebelling? I honestly don't know, it's one of the things that annoy me about this whole cloned Ba'al thing.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on what non-cloned symbiotes means to the cloned hosts?

[AndyStargateUK]

The line where Mitchell screams about letting them go is just awful and some of the worst, if not the worst, acting I have seen anywhere short of maybe (and that is a BIG maybe) Ali McGraw in Love Story.

My theory is he moved onto a splinter while saying the line from the prop bench which they were all sitting on which caused his loud response.
Everyone has a bad day now and then so it would be unfair to condem him for one thing in one episode, and as for the other bad points hopefully the writers and everyone picked up on them when they saw the final episode and try not to repeat them in the future (or incurr the wrath of us viewers!).

[the fifth man]

If only the original Baal has a symbiote, then wouldn't Nerus have noticed the lack of a symbiote in the Baals he saw? I think the symbiote as well as the host is cloned.

I must concur. I also believe all the Baal clones are complete clones (human and symbiote).

[binkpmmc]

snip, snip Bad points-
-We didn't get to see how Cam escaped in the first place,instead we had to watch the first opening minute or so repeated (I'm not really a fan of these 8 hours before stories after a few minutes of starting off in the present).
-Trying to pass yourself as a big dealer called Mr Shaft seems like Cam was just trying to immitate his favorite tv show or something, it didn't really carry any military forward planning though in fairness it didn't really seem like there was any other way they could find out who they were up against.
-Cam for me didn't pull off the line where he complained where they said they would let them go, it was oviously a jack reference ,he just shouted it rather than spoke it which probably killed the line.

For me these were so bad it was painful to watch (should also have left in your point about being teleported back to ship standing up and healed because that was just a sad joke that showed how extraordinarily lazy so many on the show have become - can you say continuity and GLARING continuity).

The line where Mitchell screams about letting them go is just awful and some of the worst, if not the worst, acting I have seen anywhere short of maybe (and that is a BIG maybe) Ali McGraw in Love Story.

[jckfan55]

... the inconsistancies that everyone has mentioned were annoying! it wasnt as if they were hard to miss either and thats just sloppy work!

Yes, when you go *directly* from a shot of Sam with blood on her face to Sam on the ship with *no blood* on her face it's so blatant I don't think you can call it nitpicking. There is no way to rationalize it away-- her hands were still tied, so she couldn't have brushed it away. Sloppy indeed.
And the thing is the little things are representative of the larger problems we've seen this season.

[Uber]

Whoops.

You're right...not Nerus...but based on his and Ba'al's plans.

Give me that at least. Or not.

[AndyStargateUK]

Intriguing observation but Sam didn't have a chance to examine the means by which Nerus disengaged the gates from the network before realizing the original plan to be beamed off of the ship wasn't going to work and came up with this Plan B.

I am left then to assume that whatever means Nerus remove that gate from the system, the master control crystal and the other crystals were intact and in place, as I don't think Sam would have had time to find and replace any missing crystals.

My guess is that she reset the DHD, which we know is a fairly quick task, thereby reconnecting one of the gates to the subspace network in order to get it to work.

Nerus hadn't disengaged the gates,he was in Area 51 at the time, like you say though she isn't yet sure how to create an alternate network side by side.
The time inbetween the gate being beamed away and SGC dialing the planet to see why they hadn't checked in means the process that was used was most likely something simple like shutting off the gates power crystals so it could not send out updates. Perhaps they wern't removed but merely pulled out of place, but like if you pull your power blug even half way out of the socket and half way in the power goes off.
It would make sense as why bother starting reprogramming everything when you haven't even selected your target planets, much easier to do a quick snatch,grab and disable (in a quick and easy fashion that anyone could do) as many gates as possible before suspicions are aroused or you can be tracked down which nearly worked.

I do have a question though. We learned from Within the Serpent's Grasp that a gate has to be close enough to it's originating planet in order for the point of origin to be accurate. Now I think that Ba'al's ship was close to a planet, but WHAT planet? Was that planet necessarily one from which Ba'al stole a gate? Further, how did Sam know which DHD to use and what the point of origin for that planet was?

Or am I missing something (which I tend to do often enough)???

When the DHD and Stargate comes online the DHD automatically updates itself, you only need to enter your 6 points of destination on a DHD, when you push the inner button it acts as the point of origin, I guess we just have to accept that Ba'al had taken the planets gate away and they matched the DHD to the gate only when the wormhole connected.
i.e They could have used any of the DHD's as they would be programmed with the same point of origin relative to the closest planet in the stargate network when they were turned back on, but only one gate out of them would work since only that would contain the origin symbol, which they would find out when the wormhole is established.

Plotwise this would mean though once Nerus went through five gates to avoid detection he would have needed some assistance to reach Ba'al from a third party.

Sam probably knew the point of origin anyway before waiting to see which gate activated when using the DHD,when they tracked Nerus Oddessy was sent an address, it's likely they were given coordinates which also comes with the nearest gate address with its point of origin included so that the ship and its crew has an utra accurate idea of where to go.