Stargate SG-1: Message in a Bottle Rewatch

February 12, 2025 6:36 PM - Season 2, Episode 7

The SG-1 team finds a capsule on a planet that emits electromagnetic signals and takes it through the stargate. As Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson begin their tests, the object begins to heat up.

SG-1 explores the rather barren and moon-like P5C-353 and brings back a mysterious orb to study. After realizing it is a threat, Colonel Jack O'Neill attempts to throw it through the Stargate and return it to P5C-353. However, it takes control of him to prevent this and infects Stargate Command with a virus.

posted by Carillon (4 comments total)

Poor Jack spends the whole episode impaled! I know why they don't have better quarantine practices, because that would be a less fun show, but this is one I felt everyone held the idiot ball a bit. The device was the cause of and then ultimate solution to the issues it created. Not quite a bottle episode, but pretty close. I did appreciate the bit that their own defensive countermeasures, in this case the nuke, would in fact be the instrument of the worlds downfall.

One part not really considered by the episode, but it's a bit shocking to me that they open up this other world as an entirely sacrificial lamb. I get their own survival, but aren't they functionally condemning that other world to death?
posted by Carillon at 6:40 PM on February 12

This another one of those episodes I remember watching only after I'm a good ten or so minutes into it. Which is funny, as how many SG-1 episodes open up with them in space suits?

I don't know if the aliens necessarily represent a force that completely absorbs and replaces life on a planet, so much as draw upon its raw materials to rebuild its own civilization. That really isn't explored, but if we need to rely on something, it's Daniel's inherent moral compass. He thought a primordial world was a suitable home for the aliens, though perhaps he has his own bias the potential for life versus an established civilization. I think we can also speculate that because the aliens were willing to move to a new world, rather than sit out the fail safe nuking the mountain (which would benefited them), they are also considerate of other life forms.

This was also exemplified by Jack not being "seriously" injured by the life forms. I was also kind of doing things while finishing off this episode, but did that air man who got infected with the antibiotic allergy croak? I honestly cannot recall. Even if he lived and died only for Daniel to low level cackle, "Oops," his life had value. Hee.

I don't think a quarantine outside of examining the device on another planet would have made much of a difference here. Sam reviewed it as a mostly inert device that was safe to return to a lab at SG-1 and that's probably as close to an expert opinion you can get in that type of situation.

The exchange between Teal'c and Jack was wonderful. Another highlight of the episode.
posted by Atreides at 8:28 AM on February 13 [1 favorite]

I wonder if in some ways this is a perfect model of early SG1 episodes. They bring something across the gate that disables one of the team members. It's alien but not evil per se even if it is causing negative externalities. There's a lot of work for a non-intuitive solution that requires them convincing the military leadership of the soundness of the plan that may only work at the last second.
posted by Carillon at 1:50 PM on February 13 [3 favorites]

That’s really well put, Carillon.
posted by janell at 1:54 PM on February 13 [1 favorite]