Stargate SG-1: The Enemy Within

Sometimes "breather" episodes (episodes that occur after something really traumatic has happened to the characters) can be better than the ratings-getters, and this episode (which aired immediately after the pilot) is no exception. The pain of Tealc, who is imprisoned, held under suspicion, and almost dissected by the very planet he has sworn to defend, is real, as is the pain of Kowalski (who, in the previous episode was infected by one of those worms, worms, worms), and the production staff made the bad boys from outer space bad again, as bad as they were in the movie. However, I noticed that in the process of prioritizing the "evil alien infiltrates the mind of a good guy" story in this episode, the producers gave short shrift to Daniel Jackson who, if I recall correctly, is mourning the loss of a WIFE. I've been a newlywed, and trust me, if my wife were stolen from me during our first year of marriage by some evil force, I would be a basket case . . . which makes me wonder why Daniel Jackson's reaction is so cool and measured and calm. (Remember, he's not a military man--just an archeologist--so his training would not, repeat NOT, enable him to "turn off" his emotions in a way that military training would help men like Colonel O'Neil.)

If I remember correctly, this is the beginning of the "Where is Daniel Jackson?" argument that plagued the series. I think that the main reason why Daniel Jackson was slighted for a while is simply that the show has another, better "partner" for O'Neil--Samantha Carter. Think about it--she fulfills the same scientific role as Jackson did in the movie, and she also does a good job of building a rapport with O'Neil in the first episodes of the show. Basically, she's a replacement for Daniel, and I think this is something that the producers of the show had a hard time working out for the first several seasons. (Frankly, I'm not sure if they ever got it right.)

As for the story of godhood versus humanity, we find that "the truth" of our existence is that while we "evolved" on Earth, we were "discovered" by the evil space aliens who show themselves in the movie, the series pilot, and this episode and transplanted to hundreds of other worlds for use as (to put it bluntly) livestock. This is fine--I'm all for the idea of presenting human beings as farm animals cultivated by other beings (though I think it is not in accord with the Christian perspective of a God who lovingly creates each one of us as unique, special creatures)--but really, if you're willing to say that we were farmed by alien beings on hundreds of worlds so that they could use our bodies, why would it be necessary for us to have "evolved" at all? Might it not also be possible that the same beings who "farmed" us also genetically engineered us as a perfect "host" race designed to suit their needs?

What I'm pointing out here is the extent to which the theory of evolution as we popularly know it today still serves to inform sci-fi television. To say we evolved from a "lower" form of life is to give us, in our view, a certain degree of independence. It is gratifying to the human ego to believe that we, of our own free will, arose out of some primordial soup to become masters of all we see, and this, I think, is the reason that the theory of evolution as most of us know it is so popular. If we were to suggest that we did not "evolve" but instead were created for a specific purpose (either malevolent or benevolent), even in the fiction of sci-fi television, that possibility is doubtless more than the average human mind can bear. That is, unfortunately, the state of our culture today--without anchor, without a root in anything beyond ourselves.

Christians need to expose their children to this worldview at some point--they will be exposed to it whether they like it or not--but we can do it in a way that also exposes them to the raw truth of what this worldview has wrought in human civilization. Yes, we have done marvelous things--splitting the atom, sending rockets into space--but we have done so at the cost of millions of human lives, lives snuffed out in two world wars, 40 years of brushfire wars, and even now, 2 decades after we said the story of war was over. And we consider ourselves superior somehow to the feudal societies that invented new, horrible ways to execute people and that stamped out free thought and free expression with the sword. However, the difference between those people and us is simply that in their belief system--Christianity--the acts did not reflect the values that the perpetrators claimed to reflect (which is why, eventually, the society of the Middle Ages collapsed). However, in our era, our brutal acts DO reflect the values that we claim to believe in--survival of the fittest--and hence, I believe, we will continue to see a downward spiral within our society, until at last we may find ourselves reaching the point of no return.