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Title: Singularity (31 Oct 1997)
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| Episode cast overview: | |||
| Richard Dean Anderson | ... | Colonel Jack O'Neill | |
| Michael Shanks | ... | Dr. Daniel Jackson | |
| Amanda Tapping | ... | Captain Samantha Carter | |
| Christopher Judge | ... | Teal'c | |
| Don S. Davis | ... | Major General George Hammond | |
| Teryl Rothery | ... | Dr. Janet Fraiser | |
| Katie Stuart | ... | Cassandra | |
| Gary Jones | ... | Sgt. Walter Harriman - Technician | |
| Kevin McNulty | ... | Dr. Warner | |
On an astronomical black hole observation mission SG-1 finds a fatal bacterial mass-epidemic on a planet where the natives told then incredulous Daniel months ago the coming solar eclipse would bring disaster. They also take home to the Cheyenne mountain base a surviving, fairly healthy orphaned young girl, who is named Cassandra and awakes Sam's maternal instinct. The naquadah traces found in her blood turn out to have made her immune, but after she has a seizure are diagnosed to constitute a huge bomb, somehow triggered by rescuing her, the whole thing must be planned as a 'Trojan Horse' by the goa'uld. Sam takes the prospect of sacrificing Cassie personal and is prepared to take personal risks... Written by KGF Vissers
Some spoiler warning. While I will try to be vague, I think that the interesting part of this episode is a no-win situation that arises and in my discussion of it you might very easily figure out key outcomes of the episode that could spoil it for you if you haven't seen it yet, so stop here if you want to go into watching it without any knowledge of what happens in the end.
A traumatized lone survivor, a young girl, is found on a planet. The team brings her back and investigates. Along the way Carter forms a powerful mother-daughter bond with the girl, but soon the team discovers that the people who attacked her settlement also set a trap to use the girl as a weapon. There's plenty of pseudo science mumbo jumbo to explain how the threat escaped their notice until they were painted into a corner, but as absurd as the science is the tactic is, unfortunately, adapted from all too real guerilla warfare techniques. The idea is to exploit any advantage that allows you to inflict damage against your enemy, even if that advantage uses their compassion or humanity against them, and the tactic has a sad history of effective application.
The episode attempts to drive the tragedy home by using an adorable child, bringing our primal drive to protect our young into conflict with our primal drive to live in the hope of creating an impossible to resolve dilemma for Carter. And for the most part it works, right up until the point where the show chickens out and offers an escape to avoid the very dilemma they worked so hard to build. But right up until those final moments I found myself wondering if I wouldn't rather provide whatever comfort I could to a child against the inevitable than be forced to live with the memories of choosing my own survival. It sounds weird to say, but I found myself hoping that I wouldn't choose to survive in that situation, even if my sacrifice would ultimately be meaningless. The thought of abandoning a terrified child to their fate is very nearly as scary to me as becoming another victim of that same fate. One is terrifying but short and ends my life while engaging with the pinnacle of my humanity, while the other is less scary in the immediate sense but would leave me with an endless amount of time to reflect on the selfishness of my choice. That's pretty awful.
But like I said, the show weasels out of its own dilemma at the last moment, opting for a much more palatable outcome in which Carter gets to have her heroic moment and avoid the very cost that makes it heroic, a convenient outcome to say the least. Not that I would rather a darker ending mind you, I want the cheap victory just as much as the show does, but realizing that makes me wonder if I would be capable of the same hard choice in the end. And that, to me, is what makes the episode enjoyable.
That's about it. It's a decent enough self-contained episode that does little to advance the shows mythology but stands well enough on its own.