After Emancipation, I think Brief Candle is my least favourite first season episodes (outside of the clip show near season one’s end, of course). It’s not that it’s a bad episode, but it’s just an episode that doesn’t resonate with me. Written by Katharyn Powers from a story by Steven Barnes, this episode was first broadcast on 19 September, 1997.

In this episode the SG-1 team learn eight episodes in what Trekkies learned in the first episode of The Original Series, don’t eat things on a foreign planet.

But O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) takes a bit of a pastry offered to him by Kynthia (Bobbie Phillips) and finds himself aging as he and the rest of the team learn that the planet’s inhabitants, in a culture influenced by Mycenea, only live for one hundred days.

While Carter (Amanda Tapping) and Dr. Frazier (Teryl Rothery) work to discover a cure, learning that the inhabitants, and now O’Neill are infected with a nano-virus created by the goa’uld who were studying the inhabitants and manipulating their evolution.

Can they cure O’Neill in time? Or will he hit old age and never recover?

While the folks at Stargate Command work the problem, O’Neill tries to convince Kynthia and her fellows of the truth of their situation and that their ‘gods’ were using and experimenting on them.

It’s by no means a horrible epiosde, but this one just feels a little jarring and feels like it slows down the speed of the series a little bit. It was starting to roll along, and this one, as thoughtful and introspective as it is, just doesn’t move along at the pace we’ve already come to expect.

But maybe that’s the point, to slow down and take a look around.

Thor’s Hammer builds more on the continuity and world-building of the series. Written by Powers this episode was first broadcast on 26 September, 1997.

Jackson (Michael Shanks) has posited that there are more than the goa’uld out ther being perceived as gods. The goa’uld seem to be power-hungry and manimpualtive, while another race seems to want to be teachers, and lift humanity up, protecting them from threats. Jackson points to Norse mythology, specifically that of Thor.

Teal’c (Christopher Judge) recalls seeing the symbol for Thor’s hammer on the planet Cimmeria, but when they arrive there a scan of the SG-1 party by a sensor sendsTeal’c and the goa’uld he carries, along with O’Neill, who tried to interfere into an underground labyrinth.

There they encounter a holographic representation of Thor who tells them that only the host can leave the labyrinth, the goa’uld Teal’c carries will be destroyed by the hammer.

Not worrying about that, initially, O’Neill and Teal’c seek a way out, but they aren’t alone done there. There’s something called an Unas (voiced by James Earl Jones) down there as well, and he seems a little dangerous.

Jackson and Carter seek out a way to reach their missing friends, and work with Kendra (Galyn Gorg), who apparently survived the Hammer and was once a goa’uld host. This gives Jackson hope for rescuing his wife, and driving her goa’uld out.

But if they are going to get Teal’c out, they may have to destroy it. But the possibility exists that they can perhaps save those that have been taken by the goa’uld!

Next week we dial up more adventures with SG-1!