The penultimate episode of season three, Crystal Skull, relies a little too much on green screen effects, which makes it a little bothersome to watch, but it’s still a fun story. Written by showrunner Brad Wright from a story by Micheal Greenburg and Jarrad Paul this episode debuted on 3 March, 2000.

When a giant pyramid is discovered on a distant world with a crystal skull at its center, SG-1 goes to investigate. Driven by the belief that its a crystal skull like his grandfather found, Daniel (Michael Shanks) is entranced by the skull, and when Teal’c (Christopher Judge) zaps him to try to free him, Daniel disappears.

While SG-1 regroups at Stargate Command, Daniel is invisible to all of them. Teal’c is the only one unaffected by strange radiation signatures, so he is the one at work on helping to find Daniel. Rothman (Jason Schombing), Daniel’s protege is back and trying to sort it, though neither Carter (Amanda Tapping), Fraiser (Teryl Rothery) and O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) are less than thrilled with his work.

The team goes to see Daniel’s grandfather, Nicholas Ballard (Jan Rubes), who is locked away in a mental asylum following his own encounters with a similar skull. But he’s unwilling to help unless he gets to know the truth.

His beliefs seem odd, but the team feels he may still be around, and Nicholas may have some of the answers they need to solve the problem. And he can see Daniel! Could his stories about ghostly giants be true?

A lot of fun, but damn the greenscreen work is jarring.

Nemesis closes out season three and reveals a new threat to Earth. Written by Robert C. Cooper, the season closed out on 10 March, 2000.

O’Neill just wants to go on vacation, he checks in on everyone before he goes (Daniel is recovering from the removal of his appendix), but is eager to duck out. Just as he’s about to leave he’s grabbed by Thor (voiced by Shanks) and beamed aboard an Asgard ship. It’s almost overrun, by little robotic spider-like creatures. Let me introduce you to the Replicators.

These guys are gonna be a lot more of a hassle than the Goa’uld. And Thor may not be much help, as he may be dying.

O’Neill asks the SGC to send him some explosives so he can destroy the Asgard ship, and the Replicators before they have a chance to land and infest Earth.

Carter works on learning about the Replicators while O’Neill and Teal’c take the fight to the bugs.

It’s not going to be an easy fight, and as the ship gets closer and closer to Earth it’s obvious we’re going to be getting a To Be Continued to close out the season! As the ship crashes SG-1 attempts to gate off the ship, and as wreckage surfaces we see that Replicators have survived the crash and are no on the surface of the planet! Can SG-1 find a way to save the Earth and themselves in time for Season Four to start? We’ll find out next time!