SG-1 is stunned when General Hammond (Don S. Davis) surprises them with his immediate resignation and retirement. Their new commanding officer, Bauer (Lawrence Dane) splits up the group, and lots of trouble ensues in Chain Reaction.

First airing on 5 January, 2001 this episode was written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie.

O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) is given a new SG team, Carter (Amanda Tapping) is reassigned to develop naquadah weaponry (leading to a disastrous test), Teal’c (Christopher Judge) is put on another SG team, and Daniel (Michael Shanks) is given a desk job.

O’Neill butts heads with Bauer immediately, and when he goes to see Hammond, the general reveals that someone may have pressured, read as threatened his grandchildren, to step aside. It seems the National Intelligence Department is looking to muscle in on Stargate Command and work a little less in the shadows.

O’Neill recruits some aid to help him get Hammond back, and the SGC back to norm… he gets Maybourne (Tom McBeath) released. The pair of them follow the digital trail and discover that Senator Kinsey (Ronny Cox) is behind a large part of it, his election fund has seen some large donations from the NID.

So with evidence in hand O’Neill and Maybourne are able to blackmail Kinsey into restoring Hammond.

In the SGC the naquadah disaster goes poorly, and shows Bauer is not the man for the job, it’s only thanks to the automatic gate shut off that a truly horrendous ending is avoided.

So much continuity here, and it works like gangbusters.

2010 was written by one of the showrunners, Brad Wright. It first aired on 12 January, 2001.

It’s now 2010, Kinsey is president, and he’s formed an alliance with the technologically advanced Aschen, who have provided them with an anti-aging vaccine among other tech. Carter is now a civilian, and she’s married to an off-world ambassador, and hoping to start a family.

When she turns to Fraiser (Teryl Rothery) the pair discover that human fertility has gone down 90% over the past three years. Humanity is dying out, being intentionally killed off by the Aschen.

She works to get the team back together to find a way to stop things, but O’Neill, who warned about making a deal with the Aschen in the first place is the hardest sale.

But once he’s on board, how are they going to stop something that’s already happened?

The SGC has been turned into a museum and doesn’t have everything they need, but soon enough, there is a plan in place. But this plan… it’s going to be risky, and come with a very high cost. But if there’s a way to get a note back in time before anything is done with the Achen, they’ll find it.

I love this episode. It’s so well-thought out, so wonderfully produced, and the character work for all the actors is fantastic. The twists, the reveals, the arcs, this is a top-tier episode for the series.