An English teacher named Daniel Jackson – fallen from favor in his career as a linguist and archaeologist – is summoned to a top-secret facility at Cheyenne Mountain, as is a junior government aeronautics employee named Samantha Carter. Once they sign confidentiality agreements, a man named General Hammond finally reveals why they’ve been brought there: an archaeological expedition in Egypt made an unusual discovery – an intact camcorder containing an intact tape. The tape shows Jackson and Carter, but radically different from the sheltered, routine lives they live now. On the videotape, Daniel Jackson claims to be a member of an elite team called SG-1 which travels through a device called the stargate; he also says that a timeship carried them into Earth’s past on a risky mission recover an alien artifact called a zero point module. Also on the tape is Jack O’Neill, a retired Air Force general, and a hulking humanoid alien named Teal’c. Apparently, the taped message was left in the event that the mission failed, resulting in radical changes to the timeline. The expedition also uncovered the time travel vehicle mentioned in the tape, which O’Neill supposedly has a unique ability to control. With no experience, and highly skeptical of what they’ve been told, it’s now up to this unlikely handful of adventurers to restore what may – or may not be – Earth’s real history.
teleplay by Jospeh Mallozzi & Paul Mullie
story by Jospeh Mallozzi & Paul Mullie & Brad Wright & Robert C. Cooper
directed by Peter Deluise
music by Joel GoldsmithGuest Cast: David Hewlett (Rodney McKay), Don S. Davis (General Hammond), Robert Wisden (Major Samuels), Colin Cunningham (Major Davis), David Lewis (Cameron Balinsky), James Purcell (Dr. Hersfield), Alessandro Juliani (Katep), Georgia Craig (Sabrina), Jay Williams (Ra), Benjamin Easterday (Ra’s Jaffa Commander), Neil Schell (Mr. Crandall)
Notes: Though he has appeared in Stargate SG-1 before, this was guest star Alessandro Juliani’s first appearance in the series since becoming a regular on Sci-Fi Channel’s new version of Battlestar Galactica.
LogBook entry by Earl Green