Stargate SG-1: Solitudes

November 20, 2024 11:46 AM - Season 1, Episode 17

After fleeing from a planet full of Jaffa, a mysterious power surge from the Stargate separates Dr. Daniel Jackson and Teal'c from Captain Samantha Carter and Colonel Jack O'Neill. Carter and O'Neill discover they've ended up on an ice planet. Little do they know, they are actually closer to home than they think.

Following a Stargate technical defect, O'Neill and Carter are stranded next to a Stargate in a cave on an icy wasteland. O'Neill is severely wounded and both are freezing. Will the SGC find and rescue them in time?

posted by Carillon (8 comments total)

I enjoyed this one a lot. It's nice to see Jack and Sam working through problems of survival, and for Jack to be pretty incapacitated. I knew the twist rewatching, but I remember it blowing my mind when it turned out that it was a second gate on Earth. Daniel also does great work in figuring out exactly what went wrong and how to diagnose the issues. Solid episode, and one that is great at making the human element the center, but setting up so many other pieces or the show.
posted by Carillon at 11:48 AM on November 20 [1 favorite]

Strong concurrence here. Maybe one of the best episodes of the first season. I had forgotten initially the twist about the second gate, so when something happened in the episode to finally knock that memory loose I had a goofy grin. I enjoyed Daniel getting the opportunity to use his smarts for something other than archaeology and sociology.

My only complaint was the rapid speed by which Teal'c, Daniel, and General Hammond, somehow made it to Antartica from Colorado.

The moments between Sam and Jack were great and foundational for their friendship going forward into the future.
posted by Atreides at 11:54 AM on November 20 [1 favorite]

One would hope a 2 star air force general could get hold of a fast plane at short notice
posted by biffa at 2:10 PM on November 20

This episode resulted in the greatest Stargate outtake evah.
posted by jabah at 3:49 PM on November 20 [9 favorites]

Can't favourite that hard enough, jabah!
posted by porpoise at 8:10 PM on November 20

[breaks favoriting button]


One would hope a 2 star air force general could get hold of a fast plane at short notice

The logistics of getting to Antartica and getting to their location, even if they could hop on a plane in an hour, would probably require a good portion of a day. From Denver to Buenas Ares, it's a 13 hour flight on a commercial jet which would probably be close to a C-130. Throw in the weather viability, landing in Antartica, then having a helicopter flight to the location, and Jack and Sam should have been pretty bad off, if not dead based on their state of being.

Now excuse me, I'm going to watch the next episode of people traveling through wormholes built by aliens and visiting humans taken from Earth centuries ago who all speak English.
posted by Atreides at 12:55 PM on November 21

When you run into a technical problem and you just keep trying the same thing, and try to fix it because "It should work!" and then you get into tunnel vision is very much something I can identify with.

Presumably she at no point tries to dial anywhere except earth, because dialing out somewhere else should work just fine.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:10 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]

The tunnel vision about ‘try another address’ feels really -real- for crisis problem solving. Not ideal, but true to life.
Not to mention they don’t have that many known-safe addresses at this stage and maybe it wasn’t standard protocol to memorize them at that point?
posted by janell at 9:22 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]