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As the episode opens, there have been a number of off-world activations of the Stargate, apparently all from the same world. A radio signal is being sent to the SGC through the Stargate, but it takes Carter some time to figure out how to adjust their receivers to make sense of the signal. As Daniel says, this is exciting because it's the first time someone has tried to make contact with them.
The SGC manages to establish communications with the other world. Alar, the leaders of the country of Euronda, is trying to find off-world allies to help his people win a war that they are losing. General Hammond sends SG-1 through the Stargate with food and medical supplies for humanitarian aid and authorizes O'Neill to negotiate an alliance if any advanced technology may be gained.
Alar is overjoyed when SG-1 arrives, although he's a bit disappointed at the strictly humanitarian aid SG-1 brought with them. However, he realizes that SG-1 is there to negotiate. He offers to trade any Eurondan technology in return for deuterium ("heavy water") that the Eurondans need to power their fusion generator, which in turn powers their defense shields. The defense shield is the only thing keeping the Eurondans from being overwhelmed.
What do the Eurondans have to offer? The fusion technology previously mentioned, advanced medical technology, and military technology. Alar invites O'Neill and Teal'c to try out VR-controlled fighters, which they use to shoot down an enemy reconnaissance drone. O'Neill is extremely impressed.
Given the Eurondans' advanced technology and O'Neill's mandate to negotiate for technology, O'Neill is eager to negotiate a treaty and agrees that the SGC will provide as much deuterium as the Eurondans need. Daniel is concerned about finding out more about on-going war and its causes. Alar informs them that their enemy conducted a surprise attack to start the war a generation ago, when Alar was a child and his father led the Eurondans. The atmosphere is now poisoned, so the Eurondans have their defense compound underground. (They discovered their Stargate while excavating the underground complex.) Their enemy is on the verge of defeating them. When Daniel asks why the Eurondans don't go through the Stargate to another world, Alar shows them a massive cavern where thousands of Eurondans are in stasis because they can't be supported currently. All of this explanation is sufficient for O'Neill, who declares that the treaty is on. Daniel is not so happy, but O'Neill orders him and Carter back to the SGC to get some deuterium.
While at the SGC, Daniel expresses his misgivings to General Hammond; he still feels that SG-1 didn't find out enough about the cause of the war. Hammond agrees that Daniel should find out more of the history if possible, and sends Daniel and Carter back to Euronda with some deuterium.
Alar is overjoyed to see the deuterium and reassured by Carter saying that much more is on its way. He presides over a second celebration of the Eurondan-SGC alliance, during which Daniel tries to find out more about the war. Alar deftly rebuts him again, and O'Neill ends Daniel's questioning brusquely.
When the celebration breaks up, Carter heads off to learn about the fusion technology, while the rest of SG1 is going to return to the SGC to finalize the alliance and bring more deuterium. Alar takes O'Neill aside and encourages O'Neill not to bring Teal'c when SG-1 returns, because Teal'c is "not like us". When SG-1 had arrived, Alar was surprised by Teal'c's presence; however, we and SG-1 have seen this many times, since other worlds are suspicious of Jaffa. However, Alar's continued antipathy toward Teal'c rings some alarm bells for O'Neill this time. O'Neill decides not to return to the SGC, and instead orders Daniel to find out more about the war while he and Teal'c do some digging.
O'Neill and Teal'c visit the stasis cavern and discover that the images of the people allegedly in stasis are repeats - there are not thousands of unique people. Daniel talks to Alar's second-in-command and learns that the Eurondans call their enemies "Breeders" because they "reproduce indiscriminately" instead of according to the Eurondans' ideas of eugenics. Meanwhile, Carter discovers while looking at the fusion reactor schematics that the underground complex must have been built well before the war started, and that there are pipes leading from the underground complex to the surface.
The Eurondans come under attack again. SG-1 converges and shares what they've learned, and Daniel expresses his certainty that the Eurondans are the ones who started the war. O'Neill quickly decides that they are not going to help the Eurondans any further, as Alar demands more deuterium to fuel their defense shields. O'Neill plays along for the moment and offers to VR-pilot some fighters again. He uses the fighter to help the enemy bombers enter Eurondan space and sends his fighter to collide with the surface directly above the compound.
As the Eurondans' underground complex seems on the verge of caving in as their shields have failed, O'Neill announces that the alliance is off and that the Eurondans shouldn't try to use the Stargate to go to Earth. SG-1 returns through the gate under heavy fire, and Alar begs to go with them. O'Neill is the last one to return to the SGC, and he orders the Stargate iris to be closed immediately. He keeps eye contact with Carter, who knows Alar will likely follow them, as an impact occurs with the Stargate. O'Neill informs Hammond that the alliance did not work out.
This was an intriguing episode, as it was interesting to see the SGC nearly ally with the "bad guys". O'Neill was primed to negotiate for advanced technology, and so he was willing to read what he wanted to into everything Alar and the Eurondans said. And none of the information that the Eurondans told them was technically incorrect or a lie - it was just told from their point of view and interpretation, or with the omission of crucial facts. In addition, SG-1 and the rest of the SGC are so used to encountering human populations fighting against the Goa'uld oppressors, that it was easy to jump to the conclusions that the Eurondans were in the right, even if they weren't fighting against the Goa'uld.
It was also reasonably plausible that Alar would be willing to trade pretty much anything with them to get what the Eurondans needed - they were about to be overwhelmed in the war, so they didn't have much choice.
But in my opinion, the "big reveal" that the Eurondans were really a racist group bent on exterminating the people on their planet that didn't believe in their eugenic plans was a bit rushed. The viewer of the episode got to see all the pieces that pointed to the war's true beginning, but O'Neill hardly got all of that information. After previously ignoring Daniel's misgivings about the Eurondans, he suddenly at the end believes Daniel's assertion that the Eurondans started the war - presumably because it fit in with O'Neill's building suspicions. This is awfully slim evidence to use to pass judgment on the Eurondans and doom them to certain death. Not only did O'Neill cancel the alliance, but he actively helped destroy the Eurondans.
What we found out about the Eurondans' master plan really seemed like a plan worth of a James Bond supervillan. Apparently the Eurondans, under the leadership of Alar's father, built the underground complex to keep the Eurondans safe during the war. They planned to poison the atmosphere of the planet, hence the pipes Carter discovered, to kill all the "Breeders" and then they would wait underground until the poison dissipated or somehow was removed from the atmosphere so they could return to the surface. The "Breeders" learned about the plan and launched a pre-emptive strike, which was evocatively described by Alar from his childhood memories. We have no idea how many Eurondans there were, but apparently enough of them with enough resources to fight effectively against the rest of the planet for 20+ years. It seems pretty unbelievable that any group could have pulled off the sort of plan that the Eurondans apparently did.
One aspect of this "master plan" that I didn't get was: why the fake stasis room? Did Alar put together this fake room quickly prior to SG-1's arrival in order to garner sympathy for the Eurondans? That's the only thing I can think of - surely the Eurondans themselves know there aren't thousands of them in stasis. This was just odd. It also makes me wonder, like in the paragraph above, how many Eurondans there really were.
One of the Eurondans' advanced technology was the VR-controlled fighter planes. One can see how this technology would enable a smaller population to fight more effectively, since each person could control more than one fighter and even if the fighters themselves were destroyed, the pilots would still survive. Tangentially, the bad side-effects of using the VR controls a lot seemed irrelevant and unnecessary to the rest of the plot. However, the technology itself nicely presaged the current military use of drones in surveillance and warfare.
In this episode, O'Neill was given the authority to negotiate an alliance/treaty in order to receive advanced technology. I have to wonder how the US government is going to react to O'Neill unilaterally deciding that the US shouldn't ally with the Eurondans. Clearly, according to our morals, the Eurondans were in the wrong in starting and pursuing the war. However, I could see political figures in the government rationalizing that it would be acceptable to prolong the war by providing deuterium, at least until the US received the technology they wanted. O'Neill hadn't even realized that Alar had made essentially a download of technical information that he was just about to hand off to Carter. It seems like a very big decision that O'Neill made on his own, with little evidence and mostly gut instinct.
It was satisfying to see Daniel's strong moral compass and the fact that he was continually willing to argue with O'Neill when he had misgivings. I thought it was striking how similar O'Neill's speech to Daniel about "the SGC's mission is to find technology to protect the Earth" was to his similar speech in season 3's "Shades of Grey" when he was pretending to be fed up with the SGC's lack of acquisition of technology. But here O'Neill wasn't faking it - confusing to be sure.
It was an interesting choice by the director to have Carter hold O'Neill's gaze at the end of the episode as Alar (presumably) impacted the Stargate iris and died. At the beginning of the episode, Carter had been visibly distressed when she realized that several Eurondans had died by impacting the iris before she got communications going with the Eurondans; O'Neill reminded her then that it wasn't her fault. The events at the end of the episode, seemed to reprise this, except O'Neill returning Carter's gaze seemed to tell her that he knew he was effectively sentencing Alar to death and was taking responsibility for it. We can't really tell how Carter feels about it.
Overall, this was a very interesting episode that made some good points about morality and not jumping to conclusions. But the episode suffers a bit in re-watching, as the "big reveal" is no longer a surprise and the viewer can see ahead of time where things are going. Also, as I mentioned above, some of the details of the Eurondan plot seem too contrived.
avondale@astr ;o.umd.edu