A visit to the world of Edora for trade negotiations reveals a world that is in peril from a meteor shower which returns every 150 years, when faced with disaster the SGC takes many of the people through the gate for protection but many are left behind after the gate suffers a direct hit. Jack is one of these people and when he believes there is no return to Earth he slowly embraces this new society developing feelings for Laira but the rest of SG1 do not know what giving up means.
A Hundred Days is one of my favourite episodes, the effects of the meter shower while not having the impact of a modern production still looked fantastic and we see a side of Jack which has only be hinted at through flashbacks and other devices. His relationship with Laira (Michelle Green) always flirtatious grew into something more serious leaving us with questions when the episode concluded with the rescue of Jack. I know where I stand on the pregnancy but it’s one of those contested issues of the franchise and alas it was never resolved.
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One of the great things about being a fan of a show is that you do see the issues with the story yet it doesn’t detract from your enjoyment. Yes there were ways Teal’c and the SGC could have accessed the gate and dug it out without the overheard radio chatter and scramble to save him without a pick axe through the head:)
This is one of those rare times where my criticism is about only a single small item because the rest of the episode is really top notch.
So, getting my only complaint out of the way first:
The rescue mission. Once they got the gate open why did give Teal’c that one tiny little bottle of oxygen? Since they were anchoring him to the ceiling why couldn’t they have anchored some really big bottles with him to give him more time? Ok, it might reduce the tension of that last minute rescue but still, they’re normally pretty intelligent about this sort of thing.
Though on further reflection it seems their planning was negatively impacted the weight of “dramatic tension”.
Something that would have made even more sense would have been to mount some shaped charges on the other side instead of Teal’c. Not enough to cause any significant blow-back damage but enough to take out some big chunks of rock. They could have done this a number of times until they’d blown through to the surface or at least hollowed out a big enough space outside the effect of the gate’s zone of desctruction for Teal’c to tie into and then there would have been room to re-open the gate after the auto-shut down to keep resupplying him with air or whatever else he needed. For that matter why didn’t they just keep firing the particle beam until it bored through the rock? If it could generate enough power to melt the naquadah barrier it would’ve had no problem with the ordinary rock left behind. Oh, the sacrifices we make for the sake of dramatic story telling….
With that being said I want to be clear these issues are really a minor concern for me compared to the overall episode. This is one of my favorite non-arc stories; actually it’s one of my favorite episodes from the entire series. I thought the comparison/contrast between the struggles of Sam & the rest of the SGC and Jacks initial struggle to get back were brilliantly played out.
It was a very nice dramatic counter to the comedic romp in the previous episode Urgo and begins to bring the focus back to the more serious work of the SGC, especially in relation to the upcoming episodes.
So I’ll reiterate that I really liked this episode and my nitpick with tail end is small potatoes compared to the whole picture.
As always gentlemen keep up the great work.