Summary
The episode starts with the obligatory "previously
on
Stargate SG-1." We see clips reminding
us about Martin Lloyd and his television series, Wormhole X-Treme! Then we see some
clips that never actually happened. SG-1, led by
Col. O'Neill, comes through the gate on a forested world.
We see O'Neill order someone or several someones to "come
on out." The someones introduce themselves as the
Furlings. If you're not familiar with the Furlings, that's
probably
because
they've never made an appearance on SG-1. They've
been mentioned as one of the races allied with the Asgard,
Nox and Ancients, but the most we've ever seen of them
is some of their technology. Still, we next see Dr.
Jackson greeting one of the Furlings and telling it,
"we thought
we'd never get to meet you."
The Furlings turn out to be overgrown Ewoks, complete
with a tree village. We then see several Goa'uld motherships
emerge from hyperspace and begin firing on the Furlings'
planet. Teal'c says, "we led them straight here." Carter
works with some of the Furlings on what is probably supposed
to be their defense technology. She spouts some technobabble,
"I thought I could make it work. The thermodynamic
loop is feeding back into the planet's core." The
two SG members are beamed out of the room, leaving the
Furlings
on their own. Moments later, the planet explodes.
Cut to the briefing room. Carter complains, "that
never happened." The current members of SG-1 have
copies of a script (marked "Wormhole X-Treme!")
in front of them. Mitchell explains that you have to
open big to let viewers
know
that there's
lots
more action to come. Carter still thinks it makes the
characters look stupid. Vala's only complaint is that
she's not in the script. Daniel questions why he's even
involved and Gen. Landry enters
and explains.
SG-1's
job is to make certain that the Air Force is represented
fairly. Plus, Gen. O'Neill asked for them specifically.
Landry points out that a fictionalized version of Stargate
Command helps their cover. Anyone coming forward with
details of the SGC could be dismissed as having gotten
their ideas from the film. "Plausible Deniability."
Landry leaves. Carter complains that the producers have
spent lots of money on writers and still have come up
with crap. Mitchell suggests that they could help make
the film better. Daniel questions why anyone would spend
this much money on a film version of a television series
that "only lasted three episodes." Teal'c explains that
the series sold quite well on DVD (a nod there to Firefly).
We finally see Martin Lloyd. He enters the briefing
room talking on his cell phone, explaining that he won't
be using clips from the series and trying to talk tough
for the benefit of SG-1. As ridiculous as it is for his
cell phone to work inside a mountain, the writers let
us know that they know how ridiculous it is by having
him complain about his reception. He tells the team that
he wants to hear their ideas, and no one will be judged
for what they have to say. Mitchell chimes in with the
opinion that they need a
strong title
sequence.
Martin laughs
this off, saying today people just throw up the title
and get on with it. Cue what is easily the shortest title
sequence Stargate SG-1 has ever used, taking
up all of six seconds.
When we return from the commercial break, we see Mitchell
fighting his way through the corridors of the SGC, pursued
by zombies. He gets to the gate room and tells Sgt. Harriman
to dial 447. He has to get "the device" back
to the planet.
"It's the only way to stop this." The gate
starts spinning, but before the sequence can be completed,
the zombies
get to Harriman and start eating him. Mitchell backs
his way up the ramp towards the inactive stargate shooting
zombie after zombie as they force their way into the
room. Cut back to the briefing room, where Mitchell has
been spinning the story for Martin. Martin tells Mitchell
that zombie stories have been "done to death, no
pun intended." Besides, it's a science fiction story,
not horror.
Martin receives a phone call with the news that the
lead actor has backed out. He asks how he's supposed
to tell a story without a lead. Mitchell tells him to
just bring in a character to replace him, which earns
him several uncertain looks. Carter suggests just having
the other characters refer to him once in a while. Martin
doesn't like that either. He suggests face switching
or body swapping. "As if anyone would believe that,"
replies Vala, sheepishly.
Martin says they must have some real-life experiences
he could draw on to help him out. Carter suggests the
time that O'Neill became invisible. Cue fake flashback.
Sam is talking her technobabble to an invisible O'Neill.
She explains that his invisibility is due to a close
encounter with a cloaking generator. To fix it, they'll
have to go back to the mothership and get the cloaking
generator. Daniel comes into Sam's lab and asks her who
she's talking to. It seems that O'Neill has slipped out
and is currently in General Hammond's office. As it turns
out, O'Neill likes being invisible. We then get clips
of O'Neill's dog apparently driving O'Neill's vehicle
through a security checkpoint, the sound of snoring coming
from an invisible source while Daniel gives a lecture,
Sam peering out from behind her shower curtain asking,
"Sir, are you there?" to which O'Neill replies, "nope."
We then see Teal'c walking next to an apparently floating
coffee mug. Teal'c tells O'Neill that he can't remain
invisible, but O'Neill says that his being invisible
gives them a tactical advantage over the Goa'uld. Teal'c
isn't buying it, and we get such lovely lines as, "you
are most transparent, O'Neill," and, "I can
see right through you." Martin fears that invisibility
might make a character too powerful, and Carter suggests
inventing
negative side effects of the invisibility, which is how
they eventually convinced O'Neill to become visible again.
Landry interrupts the meeting. It's time for SG-1 to
go on a recon mission. It also happens to be Mitchell's
200th time through the gate. Not his 200th mission, mind
you, his 200th time through the event horizon of a stargate...
any stargate... for any reason. Unfortunately for the
team, the stargate loses power before it can establish
a wormhole, leaving more time for script reviewing. Mitchell
and Daniel both implore Carter to "fix it" quickly.
When
we return from the ad break, we see SG-1 (minus Vala)
running from the replicators. Carter yells that they've
got ten seconds to reach the stargate before the time
dilation field kicks in. They run up to a ridge to see
the stargate in the distance surrounded by Jaffa. Mitchell
says, "this could be a problem." The next thing we see
is the team returning to SGC through the stargate with
Mitchell remarking, "that was close."
We cut back to
the briefing room, where Daniel is calling B.S. "How
did we escape?" Martin thinks it's obvious. Mitchell
points out that even if the area weren't filled with
Jaffa, they'd never be able to reach the gate and dial
out in ten seconds. This is the kind of feedback Martin
was looking for. Rather than ten seconds, how about
thirty. Come to think of it, thirty is too round a number.
How
about 38? Daniel doesn't think the actual number is
important because there's no ticking clock on the screen,
which gives Martin the idea of
putting a ticking clock on the screen. After all jeopardy
plus ticking clock equals box office. Vala thinks he's
replace jeopardy with certain death, but Martin says
they've gotten out of worse. So why not show the escape?
You can't show too much too soon.
Carter reports that there's still a problem with the
gate. Of course, the explanation is rife with technobabble.
Martin loves it and asks Carter to repeat it. She refuses.
He tells the team to take five while he tries to write
down her explanation from memory. Somehow, his memory
includes a term Carter didn't use, the "flux capacitor."
Vala tries to interest Martin in stories of her adventures.
At first he isn't interested. Then she mentions that
unlike SG mission reports, her tales aren't classified.
Now he's listening. She starts to tell him a story about
crash landing on top of a Goa'uld, being helped by the
local villagers, and a friendly Tok'ra (played here by
Amanda Tapping) who told her about an Ascended being
that might be able to
help
her. She meets up with friends on her search for the
Ascended being. We then get a scene of Gen. Landry's
giant head talking to Vala, and her friends, the tin
man, lion and scarecrow, as played, respectively, by
Teal'c, Daniel and Mitchell. Martin correctly recognizes
the story as that of The Wizard of Oz, and feigns
a phone call to get out of the conversation.
Mitchell goes to the control room to check on the progress
repairing the gate. He's ready for #200. Carter is just
hoping they haven't done something to permanently damage
the gate. They start the dialing sequence, but get strange
power fluctuations. She tells Harriman to shut down the
gate, but that fails. The gate capacitors begin drawing
massive amounts of energy. They close the blast doors
and the iris. Siler is sent to manually cut the power
to the gate and, as usual, gets blasted across the room
for his efforts ("why does this always happen to
me?").
Gen. Landry is forced to order an evacuation of the base.
Moments later we see Cheyenne Mountain explode.
Back from the commercials, Martin stands in the briefing
room saying, "and that is the end of Act II." He just
wrote that based on what's going on with the gate. Mitchell
points out that they're supposed to be alive in the next
scene. Martin says he'll write in that they were beamed
out at the last second. Teal'c think that sounds too
convenient. Martin says it isn't if you "hang a lantern
on it," a writing term that's used when they have another
character point out how convenient it is (like Martin's
cell phone comment).
This brings us to Martin's favorite scene, scene 24.
Mitchell enters the bridge (a redress of the Odyssey's
bridge) and sits in a command chair. Carter sits at a
workstation and Teal'c stands at another aft station.
Carter tells Mitchell that "the singularity is about
to explode." Teal'c reports that weapons are at maximum.
Daniel peers up from a scanner and reports the presence
of a solar flare which created a shock wave. Mitchell
asks Carter if she can "reverse the polarity" and orders
warp speed from the engine room. The now-Scottish chief
engineer
tells
him
he's
"expecting
a bloody miracle."
Daniel interrupts because first, it's Star Trek and
second, "it's ridiculous." Carter points out
how wrong the statement, "the singularity is about
to explode,"
is. Daniel wonders how having weapons at maximum is
going to help the situation. Martin says that the audience
loves "weapons at maximum" and won't understand
why the technobabble is wrong. Mitchell tells Martin
not to underestimate
his audience. "They're generally sensitive,
intelligent people who respond positively to quality
entertainment." Teal'c wonders why everything in
the script must eventually
explode. As Martin explains, more explosions make for
better trailers, and better trailers make for more viewers.
Martin gets another phone call. Since Nick Marlowe is
holding out, a network executive is suggesting that they
recast the entire series with a younger cast. We cut
to a scene of a young Teal'c, making out with a woman
on a ship. Rock music plays in the background. A young
O'Neill (or
is it Mitchell?) and young Carter enter the corridor
and blast Teal'c love interest. "She was so totally
a Goa'uld." It gets worse from there. No one around
the briefing table likes that idea.
Martin gets up to leave
("I need a latte") and Vala chases him down,
pitching a story that sounds suspiciously like Gilligan's
Island.
Martin tells her that if she's going to steal an idea,
she should at least make it an obscure idea. We then
get a clip of our SG-1 actors (plus an Asgard) in roles
from Farscape. I'd tell you who was playing
whom, but I never watched Farscape. Apparently,
neither did Martin, as he had no idea where Vala had
ripped off her idea from. Martin then gets more bad
news. Their foreign distributor has gone bankrupt,
so the studio is slashing his budget.
Carter reports that the gate still isn't working. Vala
asks Carter why, if the movie script is so bad, they
don't let Martin use actual mission files. Even if they
weren't classified, there are too many to go through.
"1,263," replies Mitchell. He hopes for there
to be 1,264 by the end of the day. Daniel tells him that
there already
are 1,264. Mitchell is sure he's right, but Carter tells
him he hasn't read "30185." He's not familiar
with that one, and no one can tell him because they've
been sworn
to secrecy. They can tell Vala, however. Carter tells
her that it has to do with the time the gate sent them
back to 1969 (which, of course, happened in the episode,
"1969"). Mitchell points out that it can't
have anything to do with him because he wasn't even born
until 1970.
"Nine months later," clarifies Daniel. Hasn't
Mitchell noticed how much of an interest O'Neill has
taken in
his life? Mitchell figures out that they're pulling one
over on him.
More bad news for Marty. Now all the actors are holding
out. How is he supposed to do a movie without any actors?
Mitchell points out that parallel dimensions suggest
that somewhere they exist in any form anyone can imagine,
so "use your imagination." We then get an all-marionette
version of Stargate, starting with the unearthing
of the stargate. A marionette version of General Hammond
(accompanied by Sgt. Harriman) oversees the installation
of the stargate in the Cheyenne Mountain base. Hammond
doesn't know how the thing works, so he assembles a team:
Captain Doctor Samantha Carter (who starts spieling technobabble
about gate physics), Daniel Jackson (who takes "we
found this ring in the sands of Giza" and turns
it into confirmation of his theory that the pyramids
were landing sites. He
then figures out the gate symbols and gate addresses),
and a retired Jack O'Neill. The gate is dialed and the
newly formed SG-1 go through. Unfortunately, stepping
through their strings are severed when the wormhole closes.
At the wormhole's exit, they collapse in a heap at Teal'c's
feet.
Martin thinks the idea of an entire movie done with
puppets is ridiculous. What he needs is something the
actors can't resist but costs him nothing. He needs to
make them think that he rewrote the script just for them.
He needs a twist. On cue, Gen. O'Neill makes his entrance.
Vala says, "I'll bet no one will see that coming." Daniel
replies, "nope, there'll be spoilers." Carter chimes
in with, "are you kidding? It'll be in the commercials."
After the break, we get a shot of Teal'c walking down
a city street, wearing a fedora and a trench coat. Teal'c
is pitching the idea of a show called, Teal'c: P.I. Martin
isn't impressed, but is too intimidated by Teal'c to
say so. Why is a busy General like O'Neill at SGC? Lately
he's been feeling like he's had unfinished business.
Mitchell thinks he's got just the thing: accompany them
on their recon mission. O'Neill says he wouldn't mind
one last trip through the "orifice," which draws some
strange looks.
Martin comes back, complaining that focus groups hate
his ending, which will have to be rewritten. O'Neill
suggests fishing. We get the eighth-season ending clip
of O'Neill, Carter, Daniel and Teal'c fishing at O'Neill's
cabin... then we see Mitchell and Vala sitting nearby,
also fishing. O'Neill tells Mitchell (we're back in the
briefing room), "you weren't there!"
Martin wants something with more impact, something more
moving. Vala suggests a wedding. We see O'Neill and Carter's
wedding, with Daniel as best man and Vala as maid of
honor (officiated by an Asgard). Before we get much of
a reaction from O'Neill or Carter, Martin says he hates
the idea. Landry interrupts with the news that the gate
is back up and running.
The team make their way to the gate room, leaving Martin
without his ending. Landry goes to see off SG-1 (plus
O'Neill) and O'Neill talks Landry into coming along with
them. "It'll be like a special occasion." Landry
agrees, and calls out to Walter (Sgt. Harriman) to come
along,
too. Harriman says he doesn't have on the right outfit.
O'Neill tells him he looks fine. Somehow between the
control room and the gate room, Harriman changes into
the SG-1 black uniform. He tells Landry that SGs 3-18
are ready with cake, balloons and streamers.
O'Neill invites Martin to go along with them for inspiration
for the "end" of his "movie" (yes, he makes the quote
signs with his fingers). Martin can't come along. His
movie
has been cancelled. It's not bad news, though, they've
decided to renew the series. The assembled group makes
their way through the stargate.
Ten years later, we're on the set of Wormhole X-Treme! for
it's 200th episode. Martin gets a call... the movie's
back on. We close with interviews with the actors from
Wormhole X-Treme!
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