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Stargate SG-1
"Proving Ground"
Original Air Date 3.8.02
Written by Ron Wilkerson
Directed by Andy Mikita
Howdy howdy, SG-1 fans! Much like the theme song to Enterprise, it's been a long road getting from there to here. Several agonizing weeks of no new episodes has made my body weak and my sanity frailer than normal. How I've longed to live elsewhere in the world where they've been getting their gate fix for months while I sit here in the corner of my padded cell, rocking back and forth while I mumble in a deep voice, "Indeed. Indeed. Indeed."
But yes, Showtime has granted their mercy on American audiences and the orderly assigned to bring me my food and empty my bucket by running the new eps that our polite and deferential neighbors to the north have been spoiling for far too long.
Without further ado, we begin the 101st episode with a bunch of SG-1 recruits doing a training exercise. Among the plucky bunch is Haley, last seen as an air force cadet, the requisite smart character and a human decoy. We'll probably never see either of these characters again so I really didn't care about them.
The leader of the group is one Lieutenant Elliot, an over-thinking, indecisive officer-in-training with a talent for BSing his way out of errors in a training exercise. Much like a skilled nitpicker blasting plot holes through an inferior sci-fi show, Elliot picks a hole in a training scenario to explain away any apparent error he may have made. Flawed test means any score is rendered invalid. What a weasel.
Anyway, as one may expect from a "training day" type of episode, SG-1 Lite find themselves in a situation where their skills are put to the test in a training scenario that becomes "all too real." I'll tell you right now that I knew this apparently real threat, an alien incursion situation, was just part of the training exercise. Thankfully, the attempted illusion wasn't carried through the entire episode, cheating us of drama and rendering any tension we may have experienced moot.
Instead of going that well-travelled road through cliché, the writers give us a peak behind the curtain where General Hammond and the rest of SG-1 are generally chilling out in their scenario roles while SG-1 Lite plays laser tag through the SGC. The kids, through craftiness and skill, accomplish the mission about three quarters of the way through the ep.
This is where the writers try out a little plot twist that kind of backfires. Seems that Haley was in on the illusion the whole time and helped stage a scene where she tries to shut down the stargate as the gate room is being flooded with radiation. She's knocked out by some kind of power surge and Elliot disobeys a direct order and risks his life so he can save Haley from Certain Doom. Of course, this begs a number of questions from your humble geek demigod.
When O'Neill ordered SG-1 Lite away from the gate room, he said it was because SG-3 was escaping heavy fire from Goa'uld forces. All right, cool, I'll buy that since he was speaking with the General Hammond and none of the recruits were around for whom to keep up the act. However, when the radiation attack happens, it is mentioned that it was probably coming from the Goa'uld who were fighting SG-3.
Since we know the radiation attack was fake, does that mean the attack on SG-3 was fake too? If it was, why did O'Neill talk about it with Hammond when the recruits weren't around? O'Neill doesn't strike me as much of the method acting type. My only guess is that the radiation scenario was prepared in advance and the previous attack on SG-3 was just added in during the character's ad libbing.
Or a wizard did it.
Anyhoo, keeping up the tradition of advertising the sheer magnitude of geekdom I am capable of, I will continue the tradition of assigning experience points to the characters and putting the final analysis of the episode in terms of how it would play out in a night of tabletop gaming.
The actor/players were given a break this week so they could try out the new first level characters they rolled up during their vacation. Elliot gets 1,000 experience points for figuring out most of the plot holes the GM hadn't thought about. Haley gets 1,000 just for being kinda cute. Human Decoy and Smart Character were revealed to be unexciting and their character sheets were burned on the sacrificial pyre of disinterest.
Episode Rating: 7 out of 10
- Daniel Solis thinks a wizard did it.
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