O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) and SG-1 are working to negotiate a treaty with a naquadah rich world on a developing planet. But things are about to go disastrously wrong in A Hundred Days. Written by one of the showrunners, Brad Wright from a story by Victoria James, this episode was first broadcast on 4 February, 2000.

Daniel (Michael Shanks) and Carter (Amanda Tapping) are as concerned as O’Neill when what the locals describe as an annual fire rain is in fact a meteor shower from a nearby asteroid field seems to be getting too close for comfort.

The team lobbies to get the people to evacuate until the disaster is over, but not everyone believes it’s a thing. When the impacts start coming, the team is able to evacuate most of the village, but O’Neill finds himself stuck when a strike buries the gate.

He begins to face the real probability that he may never get back to Earth.

It’s a good thing he’s got a bit of a romantic connection with one of the locals, Laira (Michelle Greene). It will make living out his life there not quite so bad.

At Stargate Command Carter and Teal’c (Christopher Judge) try to figure out a way to reactivate the gate and dig it out (a particle beam may be the answer), and Daniel suggests reaching out to their allies who have faster than light space travel.

It’s a quieter, gentle tale, and it gives O’Neill a long overdue romance episode, he’s gone for months, that Anderson and Greene seem perfect for. O’Neill seems happy when he lets go of his duty and obligations and enjoys the life laid out as possible before him. And that will make the choice of leaving that much harder when the gate is reestablished.

Shades of Grey is a solid episode but we all know that O’Neill isn’t going to go against SGC policy. It’s obviously all a set-up to find Maybourne’s (Tom McBeath) team that is pillaging the technology that O’Neill has now stolen from the Tollan.

Written by the other showrunner, Jonathan Glassner, it first debuted on 11 February, 2000.

On SG-1’s return to Stargate Command, and O’Neill reveals that he stole technology Hammond (Don S. Davis) suspends him. This allows Maybourne to make an overture to O’Neill, and invite him to join the team.

O’Neill busts the theft ring, with some help from the Asgard. It’s all revealed by the end of the episode that Hammond and the Tollan were in on it with O’Neill. It was all a plan to stop Maybourne’s teams from continuing their thefts.

Of course, O’Neill will have to apologize to everyone for his treatment of them.

Hey look! Fraiser (Teryl Rothery) has been promoted to Major! And speaking of continuity, the narrative threads make a number of callbacks tying the series into a broader tapestry which makes the story work all the better.

And as good as the performances are, you know you can’t believe that O’Neill would go rogue the way he does at the beginning of the episode. If they had stretched this actually story out over a couple of episodes, have Colonel Makepeace (Steve Makaj) lead a couple of missions, lengthen it out a touch.

But who’s the mole inside the SGC? That one gets resolved by the end of the episode. But how high does it go?