TVSquad

(S10E19) Before I begin this week's review I wanted to talk for a moment about last week's poll. In it I asked who your favorite Stargate SG-1 character was. I wasn't very surprised that the majority of you (37%) selected Colonel/General Jack O'Neil as your favorite and Daniel Jackson as your second favorite (28%). These two have been the most popular and recognizable characters throughout the entire run of the series and you could see that the show took a bit of a hit when both of them left.

How can I tell that? Well, the two least favorite characters in the poll were Cameron Mitchell (4%) and poor Jonas Quinn (1%, tied with General Hammond).

What did surprise me a bit was the popularity of Vala. She was only one percentage point behind Samantha Carter in the poll. She even came in ahead of Teal'c, who only garnered five percent of the votes. Granted, this was not the most scientific of polls, but Teal'c has been on the show since the beginning. You would think he would have garnered a few more votes. Ah well, such is the fickleness of the television viewer. Anyway, thanks for participating, and we'll have a new poll for you at the end of this post.

Onto this week's episode, the penultimate (I always wanted to write that word) in the Stargate SG-1 series. As with the last two weeks the underlying theme to the episode was family as Vala was used as bait to lure her daughter out of hiding. Yes, Adria was still alive (at least in the beginning of the episode) and massing her Ori armies to convert the galaxy to the way of their thinking. Meanwhile, in another part of the galaxy, Ba'al was hatching a plan of his own that would require the assistance of Adria's supreme mind powers. And, in a third part of the galaxy, the Rebel Alliance was about to strike a blow for good against the great Galactic Empire.

Just want to make sure you were paying attention there.

This episode tied up a number of loose ends, yet set up a potential storyline for the direct-to-DVD movies. On the one hand, the threat of both Ba'al and Adria was ended for the time being courtesy of Ba'al himself. Not only did he end up killing Vala's daughter, as well as his own clones (Are we sure he wasn't a Cylon?) but he ended up getting himself killed when the SG-1 team rescued Adria from his capture. On the other hand, killing Adria set up her ascension into the Ori supremacy, which could be the premise for one of the new movies. I mean, what other evil alien races does the SG-1 team have left to confront?

The most interesting part of the story was Vala's reactions to what was going on with her daughter. There was a constant string of conversation going around that, ultimately, Adria was need to be killed in order to end her threat. And, it wasn't like this conversation was going on behind Vala's back either; they were actually confronting her with this fact. Vala's reaction was almost nonchalant about the whole thing. I think somewhere along the line that she mentioned that she was just a vessel for Adria's imminent arrival.

However, you could see in her face that she was fighting conflicting feelings. One side of her knew that Adria was just pure evil, a force that was attempting to convert the rest of the universe to the Ori's beliefs whether they wanted to or not, and that she should be eliminated. Another side of her was calling out 'Hey, I had this child in my belly and I delivered it. She is my daughter and I should be feeling something'. Even her final statement to the SG-1 team, where she says that they are ahead of the game with the death of her daughter, seemed a bit hollow as she was still fighting her feelings.

Some other points of interest in this week's show:

-- Morena Baccarin, who plays Adria, is hot! (Hey, what do you want from me? I'm a guy!)

-- Even though the focus of the show was on Adria and Vala there was more team interaction this episode then was seen in the last two weeks.

-- One of my favorite scenes of the show was how the rest of the SG-1 team was ready and waiting when Val and Adria appeared out of the Stargate. Then, in the same scene, Ba'al's men come along and capture Adria. It was a double-double cross with the SG-1 team left empty-handed.

-- Am I the only one who thinks of Farscape every time Ben Browder and Claudia Black have a scene together?

Overall, I felt that this episode was stronger than last week's. Next week we review the final episode of this history-making science fiction series. Until then, I leave you with one of my favorite interactions of the week.

Vala: So, no IOA? No random map? No television program about dancing with supposed celebrities?
Daniel: Uh, actually that part was real.
Vala: How very disturbing.
Sam: Yeah.