Stargate SG-1: Politics

After such a good run of episodes it all comes grinding to a halt in episode 21 (Politics), which is a clip show. The biggest problem with this episode is that there's actually some plot development setting up the finale so you can't just skip it entirely, but you are going to want to watch it with the remote in hand so you can fast forward all the stuff you've already seen.

Ronny Cox is pretty great.

The episode begins with Daniel explaining his trip to the parallel universe to the rest of SG-1. Jack doesn't believe him, Sam does, Teal'c doesn't weigh in one way or the other. Then Hammond shows up with Samuels, one of the basically interchangeable bureaucrats who want to shut the Stargate program down and just hope that the Goa'uld give up and leave us alone. He's a dumb, forgettable character who I actually had to look up to remember was also in  episode one.

But he's working for Senator Kinsey, who's a much more memorable character - because he's played by Ronny Cox, whom you may remember from everything on TV. Kinsey wants to review SG-1's past missions to see if there's any financial or strategic advantage to keeping the Stargate program operating. You'd think "hostile aliens with FTL interstellar travel and advanced weapons know where we live" would be the only argument you'd need, but instead we get to watch clips of previous episodes. He does get a good line about the dumb apostrophe in Teal'c's name though, and makes a pretty good point about the danger of keeping the Stargate program completely secret as they do.

Actually he makes several good points - not points that would trump the "hostile aliens are coming argument" but good - and no one really comes up with any valid counter-arguments. The obvious conclusion is that the Stargate program should be declassified and shared with the world as the threat is global and that way its costs and benefits could be divided up for the good of humanity. But the good guys like the status quo so we're supposed to agree with them.

He's certainly no Harold Maybourne.

Most of the rest of the episode is clips of previous episodes, and Kinsey again makes the excellent point that SG-1 are a bunch of incompetent morons who keep fucking up in new and exciting ways, and that even if the Stargate program was to go on, it should definitely not be run by them or anyone who thinks they're doing a good job. He's right. But again we're supposed to agree with the protagonists.

Daniel brings up his trip to the parallel universe and Kinsey, of course, doesn't believe him. So that's it, the program's shut down and Teal'c's not even allowed to go home. And that's where the episode ends.

The new bits of this episode are actually quite good, it's just that it's not a full episode. It's half an episode at best. Being able to immediately watch the next episode straight after does help a bit, but it's still bad. I'd like to see a version of these last two episodes combined and with the clips removed, because it would probably be pretty great - especially considering that the next episode has some bits that could afford to be cut as well. You could probably make a single, really good episode out of the two of them.

Is this the end? No, there's still one episode to go.

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