STARGATE SG-1: Moebius

By: Jason Davis
Review Date: Saturday, March 19, 2005

The teaser of "Moebius" is about death. The first two acts are about time travel. Acts three and four, well, that's another story...literally. For the eighth-season finale, the producers of STARGATE SG-1 are playing a favorite game of the science fiction genre and having a go at the classic altered timeline narrative that allows the audience to see what might have been. While time travel and alternate realities often play havoc with the credibility of a story, it looks like STARGATE's got it licked, but viewers will have to wait for part two to know for sure.

Learning that Dr. Catherine Langford has passed away, Daniel Jackson is entrusted with her collection of ancient artifacts, only to discover that Ra was in possession of a ZPM 3,000 years before. SG-1 plans a mission to sneak back to ancient Egypt and abscond with the device before Ra abandons Earth, but things get out of hand, and by the first commercial break, things have gone from bad to worse. At this point, the writers get to have a little fun with the characters fans have known and loved for nine years. The bulk of the story picks up in an alternate reality where the characters have lived their lives bereft of SG-1 and the importance it brought to them. A welcome return from General George Hammond brings them together in a very different world where audience expectations are repeatedly foiled by roads not taken and equally rewarded by trivial touches just for those in the know.

Until part two airs, there's no certainty to how the show will resolve the paradoxical scenario its created. Part one offers a great take on time travel that, if followed up as it began, will produce a seamless story that checks out on all the logical flaws that usually plague these experiments in chronology. As the title implies, viewers can expect an endless loop to resolve the story without the niggling plot threads that are the bane of lesser tales of temporal travel. The show's already managed to gloss over the trickiest of elements, the method of travel itself, by having General O'Neill think the jumper through its journey to the past. This sidesteps the sort of irritating technobabble that the STAR TREK franchise offers to explain these occasions while being plausible given Jack's genetic ability to control the ship.

Best of all, Jack O'Neill's usual dry sense of humor manages to take the wind out of the absurdities of time travel before the audience has a chance to. Thus, the show acknowledges the incredible nature of its concept with a comedic wink that assures those watching that this is just a formality before getting to the meat of the story (i.e. nerdy versions of Daniel Jackson and Samantha Carter trying to convince an ambivalent Jack O'Neill to do something that his other self has already declared ridiculous). With a predictable but necessary climax, it becomes a matter of seven days to see if the story will live up to its potential.