episodes | fan fiction | multimedia | fun stuff | research | shop | links | updates

email us | site map | home

stargatefan.com : episodes > season 1 > next episode : bloodlines

The episode begins with a group of people in old-fashioned clothes turning the Stargate by hand. A man wearing spectacles is overseeing it all, and another man with an old fashioned video camera is recording the scene. A man goes, "First lock engaged."

Suddenly, the scene described above is on a TV screen, with Daniel absorbed in it. Jack comes into the room saying they're supposed to be at "that physical assessment thing." Daniel knew, but he just wanted to finish the reel. Jack thought he was being a little obsessive with the film they'd received from the Pentagon, which had recently been declassified.

O'Neill: "You know, you seem a tad obsessed with this stuff."
Daniel: "This was transfer from film of experiments done on the Gate in 1945. You don't find that the least bit intriguing?
O'Neill: "Oh yeah. Nothing peaks my interest more than repeated failure."

Daniel wondered why Jack didn't find it a little intriguing, since the films came from experiments done on the Stargate in 1945. He himself found it curious that the scientists back then had given up on gate use. There were no summaries or notes or anything in the box of film about the experiments they'd performed back then or why they'd given them up.

Jack: "Whole boxes of the material could be missing."
Daniel: "No, the Pentagon said this was everything."
Jack: "Oh please. The Pentagon has lost entire countries. Come on. Doctors have two days of tests planned for us. Wonderful tests."

Daniel called his attention back to the screen. The Stargate wormhole was engaged, and a guy was putting on an old-fashioned deep sea helmet (I have no idea what this thing was called...an aqualung or what, Gary?) and a cloth uniform, standing before the Stargate wormhole. He briefly spoke with the other scientists in the room and started walking toward the gate, with a rope attached to his gear. He walked through the gate and disappeared. The safety rope was left dangling Earth side when the the wormhole disengaged. The tape ended there. Daniel and Jack were astonished, to say the least.

Catherine was shown returning home. Met by her maid, she was told she had a visitor, a young man waiting for her. Daniel was taking a look at some artifact she had a shelf. Surprised and delighted to see him, she gave him a big hug and asked why he'd returned from Abydos. He remarked that she'd gotten his amulet, which made her ask why he was avoiding her question.

Jack was looking through other top secret stuff when Hammond came in questioning Daniel's whereabouts since he was supposed to be briefing SG-4 and hadn't answered his pager. Jack said he hadn't seen him.

Meanwhile, Daniel was getting grilled by Katherine. He said he hadn't been able to tell her certain stuff because they wouldn't let her due to its classified status. She sarcastically asked when he'd become an outstanding member of the military. Catherine said she'd make him some tea and send him on his way. He said he wasn't military, and that was exactly why'd he'd come to see her. Catherine was still fussing, saying planetary shifts and everything, and nobody's told her anything until six months later??? Daniel said that she could have told him that they'd experimented with the Stargate in 1945. Catherine sat down and began to tell him the little she had known about her father's research team and their work on the gate during the war.

They had no idea what the gate was back then; they figured it was a weapon and could be used as one. Daniel said the Pentagon had declassified files and sent them the reels of film that had been done in 1945. She said the military and her father had had little use for a 26-year-old girl back then; what little she had learned came from overhearing her father's discussions with Ernest. When Daniel asked who Ernest was, the scene changed to a young Catherine sitting before a fire with a young man. The man, Ernest, was telling her about a generator explosion that had occurred when they used alternating power to work the Stargate. Massaging his shoulders, she asked if he was going to speak to her father about her. She then suggested they used direct current to prevent feedback to the generators, and stressed that he should speak to her father. Ernest promised he would, and she kissed him.

Daniel said so she didn't know that there was any more information other than her father's notes. She said the military hadn't told her there was anything more, and she suspected that even General West (the military man who'd been in charge of the Stargate program when she'd convinced Daniel to join them) hadn't known about the film reels. She'd had to petition several government administrations to get the Stargate program going again.

Daniel shocked her with the information that they'd actually turned on the Stargate in 1945. The scene changed to Ernest discussing the gate with Catherine's father. He was sure the 36 symbols on the gate were destinations, because if they'd been like a combination lock, they wouldn't have needed 36 of them. Her father warned him that that the "doorway to heaven" might mean anyone passing through the gate would die. At that point, Catherine came into the room with a tea tray; her father reminded her they had a maid for a reason. She said she'd wanted to do it, and intimated that Ernest should ask her dad for her hand.

She told Daniel she never knew they'd turned the gate on, and the information wasn't in her father's note. Daniel showed her the videotape. Catherine, stunned, had a flashback to her father saying there had been an explosion in the lab and apologizing for Ernest's death. Daniel asked why her father hadn't told her the truth. She said he must have been protecting her from knowing that Ernest had gone through the gate (risking his life) without discussing it with his fiance first. She told Daniel that Ernest had been a lot like him, so young and passionate about his work. That was why she knew Daniel would be the one to solve the mystery of the Stargate.

Daniel told her he wasn't supposed to show her any of this stuff, but then he gave her some papers with computer enhancements of the address Ernest had used, and told her they could go there. Next thing, she was shaking Jack's hand, glad to see him. General Hammond was mad that Daniel had given her classified information; he asked Jack if he'd told Daniel to do it. Jack said no, but she had been the one who used to run the program and was responsible for most of what they knew of the gate. Teal'C entered the room and Daniel introduced him to Katherine.

Hammond asked if Jack was aware of Daniel's most recent request. Jack asked Daniel, "You just have to go that one extra step don't you?" Daniel told them Ernest was her fiance, he'd been the man to see the Stargate for what it really was, and they could go there. Katherine piped up that she was going with them. Daniel said he might still be alive.

Sam came in and hugged Catherine, adding that there was another reason to go there. Though the address had nearly the same coordinates as Abydos, it hadn't been listed on the Abydos cartouche. This signified that because the Goa'ulds did not know of the address, they weren't the ones who built the Stargate system in the first place, and weapons might be available on the uncharted planet to defeat the Goa'uld. Teal'C agreed, calling the Goa'uld scavengers.

Teal'c: "The Goa'uld are scavengers. Since they have not traveled to this planet, we may find technologies we can use against them."
Catherine: "You speak!"
Teal'c: "When it is appropriate."

Hammond thanked them for their insight, but he was already convinced that Ernest could still be alive, so they were going through the gate. Teal'C and Sam went through with the MALP, Catherine was with Daniel and Jack. She was a little apprehensive, but Jack assured her it was a piece of cake. They arrived in a large room of a castle, with dust sifting through cracks overhead, two doorways, and a storm brewing outside.

They were getting a pretty good look around the room when a surprised Sam said somthing out of surprise. They looked down the corridor she was facing. A naked old man walked out of the shadows, looking at Daniel through some glasses hanging around his neck.

Carter (sees a very...er...undressed Ernest Littlefield): "Oh my."
O'Neill: "Oh, for crying out loud."

Daniel introduced himself and told the man they'd come through the gate. He touched Daniel to see if he was actually real, and then hugged him, crying and saying that it was about time. He then hugged Jack. Sam saw him coming toward her and Teal'C, said, "Oh, boy," and moved out of the way. As Ernest hugged Teal'C, Jack told Daniel to do something. He called out, "Dr. Littlefield?" and indicated Catherine in the background. She thought he didn't recognize her at first, but he called her by name, said, "Hmpph," then turned back the way he had come. Catherine said, "Fifty years and that's all he had to say?" Daniel went after him to see if he was OK.

The castle is shown on a piece of cliff, some of it unsupported and dangling above the sea. Daniel goes down some stairs; Ernest says, "Still here?" A little uncomfortable, Daniel asked if Ernest had some clothes to wear. Asking if they were going home, he put on the dirty and tattered piece of the uniform he'd worn through the gate. Daniel said yes and asked if anyone else lived there with him. He tentatively handed Daniel something and told him to eat; he guessed Ernest had been there for 50 years, alone.

Catherine was talking to Sam, saying she hadn't known what to expect and couldn't believe he'd been that close to them all that time, light years away, alive. She started deriding herself for feeling like a schoolgirl when she saw Ernest again. Sam suggested that he was having a time dealing with it too and suggested Catherine go talk to him.

Meanwhile, he was showing Daniel a calendar he'd made. Daniel asked if he'd been able to figure out who built the place they were in. Ernest referred to it as Heliopolis, an Egyptian word for a city of education and study, especially worshipping Ra. He also gave Daniel a leather journal he'd kept when he asked if Ernest had seen any hieroglyphs indicating Ra. In the journal, Ernest had written about Catherine as though she was there with him, writing of her with affection. She came into the room and overheard Daniel reading aloud some of the parts Ernest had written about her, saying her father had lied to her. Daniel left them alone together.

He still questioned that she was real. Catherine told him he'd have to believe she was; this wasn't easy for her either. He said she looked different; she told him she was old, and so was he. Still speaking of his fantasies, he said they'd had a wonderful life together and she'd forgiven him. She told a tearful Ernest that she hadn't been able to imagine him because she'd thought he was dead, and she hadn't forgiven him..

Jack and Teal'C came back from looking for any other inhabitants. Daniel and Sam were sitting on some steps, with him studying Ernest's journal. Daniel told Jack he was sure Ernest had been alone since he'd gotten there. As Teal'C warned of the approaching storm, Ernest and Catherine rejoined the group. He told them the storm came every year. Jack and Teal'C felt the place couldn't take another big hit, and they should leave immediately. Daniel disagreed, hating to leave before completing study of the area. Jack overruled him, said they'd take Catherine and Ernest home, leave the probe to monitor the situation, and come back when the storm was over.

Ernest said he'd tried for years to make the gate work. Daniel moved toward the DHD and started to explain how he should have used it; Jack said to just show him. When they went up to the DHD, they were shocked to see the red crystal was broken and non operational. Jack told Sam he thought the probe was supposed to detect this sort of thing. She said the probe just gave visual confirmation that there was a DHD. She then pressed a few buttons but nothing happened. Ernest told them it had been like that when he got here. Catherine said that's why he never came home. He asked if this meant they weren't going home. No one answered him; the storm kept moving in.

Teal'C and Sam were trying to make repairs to the DHD. Ernest took Jack, Catherine and Daniel to a room he considered the safest when a storm was in progress. He uncovered an object similar to the DHD in the room and pressed the button. Four different languages of alien text lit up in four separate walls. Daniel read a part of the journal where Ernest had described the room as a kind of meeting place for four separate races, sort of a United Nations for aliens.

Sam figured she'd found the power source to the DHD, but said it could take years to figure out the right way to put the crystals back into it. She told Teal'C might be able to hook the power source up to the gate directly and run it that way.

Ernest told Jack to touch the crystal again. A bunch of orange and greenish-blue lights were projected around the top of the room. Jack recognized one of the groups of lights as a periodical table element. Catherine and Daniel started naming the elements they recognized. Ernest rattled off more of them and said there were 146 of them. Catherine told him there were only 111 on the periodic table; he said there had only been 90 elements when he'd first arrived there in 1945.

Daniel and Catherine felt it was amazing that four completely different races could represent the basic elements so visually when the scientists on Earth hadn't been able to figure out the actual appearance and structure of atoms. In a flash of brilliance, Daniel decided that since elements were the building blocks of the universe, that was how the four races had been able to communicate with one another, on a level common to all four of them. He had gotten all excited, when Ernest told him to turn the page. Daniel asked if he was telling him the device was like a book. He nodded and said he had tried, but hadn't been able to figure it out. Daniel told them it could take a lifetime to decipher, beginning with what the element symbols stood for (letters or numbers). Ernest told him "more," meaning it had taken him more than a lifetime, for which Daniel apologized.

Jack: "Daniel, before your head explodes, can I remind you that we have more important things to deal with right now?"

Daniel said the room could be the key to understanding everyone's and everything's existence, which Jack said wouldn't mean squat if they never got out of there.

Teal'C and Sam had rigged up a bunch of heavy-duty cables between the gate and the DHD. Sam explained what they were doing when Jack and Catherine came back; they were just getting ready to test it. She asked where Daniel was; Jack said Ernest was showing him a new toy, some light show that could be the key their existence. When some plaster started falling from the ceiling, he asked if she could pick up the pace a little bit. Sam twisted a wire on the DHD, the gate whirred to life for about three seconds, then died.

Just as they were registering disappointment, the ceiling over Sam, Jack and the DHD caved in, and Jack grabbed Sam and rolled away a split second before it landed on them. When the air cleared, the group looked into a gaping hole of seawater where the DHD had been.

Daniel and Ernest were looking at the wall panels; Daniel was able to translate some of the text, and told Ernest it was of Thor's race-another long, but good story. Jack was discussing basic survival training: We know what we have, what do we need? Teal'C-they have the Stargate; they need a dial home device. Sam said, in a scientific manner, that gate worked from energy, and the wheel would work when they had enough reserve power...but she didn't see any electrical outlets--did he?

Daniel, still examining the pedestal lights, wanted a perspective on how the lights were arranged; Ernest explained how he'd used the markings on the floor to and their height to figure some of it out. The rest of the group came downstairs and Jack told Daniel to step away from the pedestal. They told him about the DHD going through the floor, and they needed the pedestal for a potential gate power source. Daniel said no, and suggested using Teal'C's weapon for a power source because he was obsessed with figuring out the pedestal information. Sam stated the obvious, that the staff weapon wasn't powerful enough. Catherine said they didn't have much time, and Jack said the whole place could be on the bottom of the ocean in a minute, so please... Daniel, frustrated, goes, "Great! Shoot it!" Teal'C used his staff weapon on it, which had no effect. Jack said, "Now what?" The group glanced around for a second as thunder and lightning continued to roll.

O'Neill: "I'm obviously no scientist, but, ah...couldn't we use that Ben Franklin thing?"

As Sam, Jack, Catherine and Teal'C walked back to the gate room, Sam was saying the gate accepted all types of energy from static to nuclear. They'd have to rig something up on the roof to attract enough lightning to turn on, but not destroy, the gate's mechanism. They got to work.

Catherine and Ernest started discussing Daniel not wanting to leave the pedestal room. He compared it to the Torment of Tantalus, a king in Greek mythology who was banished to Hades and tortured by being near water that receded every time he tried to drink. Ernest told Catherine how he had been much the same way, reaching for what was out of his grasp when what he'd had in his hands was of more value. He'd been a fool. Catherine told him he'd suffered enough. That was in the past, and there was no sense wasting time there. He glanced down and saw his old helmet, saying it would attract the lightening. He gave it to Catherine (who passed it to Teal'C and told him to take it to the roof). Ernest went to get Daniel.

Daniel was still at the pedestal and told Ernest to come and get him when they got the gate running. Ernest told him there was no time, and nothing was worth dying for if you could never share it. He grabbed Daniel anxiously and turned him around, stressing that Daniel must believe him, he knew!

A steel cable had been hooked between the helmet on the roof and the gate. When the lightening struck, Sam told Teal'C to start dialing in because they might have only seconds once the gate was open. Daniel still refused to leave, and told Jack he was staying. Jack sent Ernest out and started arguing with Daniel about staying. He grabbed Daniel's arm and started to drag Daniel out. He yelled Jack's name and said, "Please." Jack let him go. Daniel went back to the pedestal and looked up for a second. Then he grabbed Ernest's journal and left the room with Jack.

Ernest and Catherine were looking at the gate. He was a little scared about called it a piece of cake. Ernest said not from what he remembered, but they went through anyway, with Teal'C following. Sam stayed until she saw Jack and Daniel in the doorway. Jack told her to go ahead. She stepped through. The area over the doorway crumbled and almost hit them. The rest of the castle started crumbling and they dived forward to avoid a column that came crashing down. On the other side, Carter was staring anxiously at the gate. The gate guy said the wormhole was destabilizing, and the gate started flickering like it was going out. Daniel and Jack got up and dived through the gate. Just as they made it to the other side, the wormhole went out.

Later, they tried establishing a wormhole to the castle again, but chevron seven wouldn't engage. Ernest, a disappointed Daniel, Jack and Catherine were observing. Jack said the place was obviously gone, but he was still alive. Daniel said, thanks to Ernest. Ernest said they still had his journal, and Daniel could always ask the aliens who wrote the pedestal language what it meant when he ran into them. Catherine told him he'd better tell them about it too; Daniel promised he would. Ernest gave him an enthusiastic hug; Jack told Catherine to do the same for him. He and Daniel looked on as Catherine and Ernest hugged each other.

< back to index
< last episode
next episode : bloodlines >