SG-1 Revisited: Prodigy

Welcome back for Day 2 of SG-1 Revisited. We are still in Season 4 of SG-1 and I always found this particular episode represented the past and the future of Stargate Command better than most of them. Imagine a lecture on wormholes being delivered by Major Carter and one of her equations was wrong. A brilliant but ill-tempered as well as ill-mannered young cadet points out this flaw and Carter sees potential in this girl if she could only play by the same rules as everyone else. This is Prodigy.

I am soooo bored.

Air Force Cadet Jennifer Hailey (Elisabeth Rosen of My Mother's Ghost, Sanctuary, Bless the Child, House of the Dead, Lucky Stars and Comforting Skin) would be a great asset to the SGC and Carter needs her to see in spite of being gifted she needs to go through the training as everyone else in order to rank up and probably not break the nose of any upper-classmates again. Colonel O'Neill and Teal'c are off-world at a research facility on a moon M4C-862 with a gathering of scientists that have deemed O' Neill and Teal'c as an unnecessary venture on Stargate Command's thinking and they will simply just get underfoot. O'Neill and Teal'c proceed to do sweeps around the base to ensure safety.

Back Earthside, Carter finds out that most of the negative attitude that stems from Hailey is due to boredom and frustration with the course she is taking. Constantly being compared to Carter regardless how her high scores in every class she attends. To sever the chip on Hailey's shoulder, Carter gets permission to give Hailey a tour of the SGC but General Hammond feels otherwise as he does not feel she is officer material. Carter goes to bat for Hailey stating if she glimpses her potential future with the SGC that she will buckle down and excel as a officer and make Hammond proud.

These titles are a bit too close to my groin.

Back at the moon, Dr. Thompson (Hrothgar Mathews of Cold Squad, The Core, Tom Stone, The Wild Guys and Cable Beach) discovers an alien life form comprised of energy phases through solid matter and discharges energy. Thompson tells the other scientists that they need to capture one for the betterment of all mankind!!! Yeah that old chestnut never comes to bite us in the ass.

Both Dr. Lee (Bill Dow of The X-Files, Cold Squad, Stargate SG-1, Pasadena, Da Vinci's Inquest, Kyle XY and Stargate: Alantis) and O'Neill think this is a bad idea as the makeshift container is breached by the lifeform zapping Thompson over and over and over again until he is a microwaved meal. Ick.

Unaware of what is happening on M4C-862, Carter and Hailey go for a visit to be right dab smack into a crisis when Carter goes into action to assist O'Neill, Teal'c and the surviving scientists. Hailey and Carter are butting heads on who hypothesized the most likely scenario while lives are in the balance. Will SG-1 be able to remove the scientists off the moon? Is M4C-862 deemed less than safe for humanity?

A few points on the episode now.

This marks the first appearance of Bill Dow of X-Files as Dr. Bill Lee. As he is barely is able to keep from being killed he ends up stay for the rest of the series, the spin-offs and even the movies. Pretty snazzy, sir.

Guest star Michael E. Ryan is the actual The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force which Richard Dean Anderson gets to ask, "Do you really have Air Force Colonels who act the way I do? General Ryan simply replied, "Yes and worse!" General Ryan served until retirement in 2001.

No, let's not shoot it.