Season Two Commentaries
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|Season One Commentaries| |Season Three Commentaries|
|Episode Guide| |Stargate Collection| |Home Page|
Here you can find my commentaries for all of the SG episodes from Season Two. Usually you can find the commentaries right here, but every now and again I'll have to refer you to another file. The commentary will still be written by me and it'll still be a file on my site, but you'll just have to wait while it loads.
Now, don't get me wrong. Stargate: SG-1 is one of the most brilliant works of fiction ever conceived. The cast is brilliant, the writers are brilliant....everything's brilliant! But just what drugs were the producers, or whoever it was in power, on when they approved Prisoners for release? Unfortunately, this is the kind of episode of Stargate: SG-1 that the TV critic in my local paper would just die to see. The plot is an interesting one, but the way the producers produced it is a perfect example of how not to produce such an episode (got it?).
When we see that SG-1 has unleashed the so-called Destroyer of Worlds onto the universe with all the information in SGC's computer, it is an obvious need for a sequel at the least. I would probably have found some reassurance if this episode had been a multi-episode saga, perhaps hoping that the second episode would be better than this one. But no, I must suffer in silence.
The only hope remaining for Prisoners is if it makes an episode which, in the quality department, is compairable to ones such as Bloodlines when the Destroyer of Worlds returns.
When I first saw the trailer for this episode, it looked like a time-travelling fest and so I thought we were going to encounter something along the lines of the Season One episode There but for the Grace of God. But we later learn that SG-1 has been pulled into a world of virtual reality, where a character known only as 'The Keeper' controls all. The Keeper claims he keeps the people in the virtual reality loop so they can be safe from the poisoned world, which SG-1 tries to explain is a true paradise.
The episode revolves around SG-1's attempts to escape from the virtual reality and return home. Now, when you consider that Solitudes revolved only around one seemingly mundane objective yet it still managed to become one of the best episodes, you'd think that a single mundane objective-based episode would be upto the same standard. But no, this episode is done the same way as Season One's Tin Man; half-way through the show, you'll be yelling at the telly just get them out of there and be done with it!!
I'm sorry, but this episode is simply Tin Man under a different backdrop.
This episdoe enables us to get some more insight into the Asgard race; they are the grey aliens we keep seeing in things like The X-Files, who keep abducting humans from Earth and who crashed at Rowswell in 1947. It also explores more of the effects left on Carter due to her being host to Jolinar (sigh, from In the Line of Duty, sigh).
In this episode, Carter and Daniel Jackson go through a test-of-worthyness, or whatever they call it, similar to what we saw in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And it also seems that, regardless of what the person'll get after they go through the test-of-worthyness, it has to involve solving a riddle and/or walking over a bottomless crevace.
For the mathematically-minded: in the scene where Carter and Jackson determine that Thor wants them to solve the riddle of the runes, they determine Thor means the constant pi. Carter remarks that "Pi is the formula for finding the circumference of a circle by measuring the radius". This is an acceptable answer, but a more accurate one would be diameter rather than radius.
And in the open scene when General Hammund and SG-1 debate going to Cimmeria, all of the male members of SG-1 step foward with why they must go. Carter didn't actually have a line at that point, but ad-libbed "And I...was there, sir!"
At the end of this episode, Teal'c's family is taken for refuge at the Land of Light, the planet where SG-1 went ape in The Broca Divide.
A constant joke which comes up during this episode is SG-1's chronic fear of bugs. Even O'Neil winces as he prepares to kill the bug which will soon sting his Jaffa team-mate. Carter seems to be the only member of SG-1 who shows no prominent fear of the insects. Another humorous scene is the episode's final one, where Teal'c thanks the young street urchin who helped him by buying her a water pistol bazooka, then heading to face her in 'battle'!!
The scenery of the insect's home planet is certainly brilliant, and compliments Carter's observations of the apparent lack of pollution on the planet. There are also a number of good escape scenes as SG-1 flee from the bugs.
Another mythological element explored in this show is Carter's memories of Jolinar (In the Line of Duty, sigh). These were also explored in Need and Thor's Chariot, and it's shown that Carter cannot access Jolinar's all-important memories at will.
This episode is basically a nice little humour fest and a bit of mystery as we attempt to find out what race it was who implanted their knowledge into O'Neil's brain, Jack doing some very crazy things as he does so. It all ends with the Colonel being saved on the Asgard's home planet (the alien race we saw in Thor's Chariot). Like Thor's Chariot, this is a pretty impressive episode but it just doesn't cross the line to be worthy of a summary.
This episode isn't really one to keep, but it's worth watching a couple of times just to see how funny it is.
Now, the death of the ultimate bad guy isn't the usual thing you'd expect from a TV series. But in this episode not only must SGC try and keep him alive, but they have to be careful of Sokar, another one of the System Lords and (apparently) the first one on Earth. Sokar is also not a nice person, being the original evil incarnation as far as we can tell. This episode is certainly a very good one, in the suspense department and how each member of the SGC confronts their mortal enemy. This is more of a human drama than an action episode, with a bit of suspense as Sokar tries to burn through the Iris. A great one to add to your video collection.
Basically, this is yet another virus episode except it explores just how far humans can disturb the environment of local areas and also just how weird other planets can be. Interesting, but not overall worth remembering.
The episode isn't all that good, either. Sure it has the Tok'Re and everything, but it's not the best episode the producers have to offer.
This cliffhanger isn't as well done as the previous one, even though the basic plot is pretty good. And another thing: Daniel's new haircut has just got to go!!