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Daniel awakens in unfamiliar surroundings, suffering from injured that he barely remembers receiving. Three months earlier, SG-1 emerged - quite publicly - through a stargate that was treated as a museum relic. The planet onto which the team stepped is in the grip of a cold war, but the suspicions that result from the reports of the stargate’s activation heat up hostilities quickly. While he was still trying to learn about the planet’s people and culture, Daniel became trapped when an all-out intercontinental war broke out - and as O’Neill and the rest of the team try to secure Daniel’s release from a rapid succession of leaders rising to power and falling again, no one can be sure that SG-1’s appearance wasn’t the spark that ignited decades of smoldering hostilities.

written by Damian Kindler
directed by Peter F. Woeste
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Amy Sloan (Leda Kane), Timothy Webber (Commander Gareth), Matthew Bennett (Jarrod Kane), James Kidnie (Soren), Gary Jones (Chief Sgt. Walter Harriman), Richard Side (Guide), Christopher Redmond (Tian), Preston Cook (Radio Man), Charles Zuckermann (Rebel Soldier), Leanne Adachi (Rebel Aide)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

An excursion through the stargate ends in a hasty retreat back to Atlantis, and as Major Sheppard’s team returns, Dr. McKay takes a shot to the head from a Wraith weapon, but its paralyzing effects are only temporary. Dr. Weir points out that out of a mere nine trips through the gate, Sheppard has encountered the Wraith five times, and worries that a spy is operating within the team in an attempt to sabotage their stay on Atlantis. Sheppard agrees, but is less than thrilled when Teyla seems to be the prime suspect. Weir sets up interviews with every Athosian who is serving in the city, including Teyla, but restricts them from certain parts of Atlantis or from leaving the city. With stargate travel declared off-limits, Sheppard and Ford explore Atlantis’ own world with a jumper, finding an enormous land mass elsewhere on the planet. Weir considers the possibility of relocating the Athosians to that continent, but as she prepares for a backlash at the suggestion, she is surprised when most of the city’s Athosians approach her with an offer to leave voluntarily. But after they leave and Sheppard’s team resumes trips through the Stargate, with Teyla in tow, the Wraith attacks continue.

teleplay by Joseph Mallozzi & Paul Mullie
story by Kerry Glover
directed by Mario Azzopardi
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Paul McGillion (Dr. Beckett), Christopher Heyerdahl (Halling), Ross Hull (Dr. Corrigan), Dean Marshall (Sgt. Bates), Boyan Vukelic (Sgt. Stackhouse), Edmond Kato Wong (Technician), James Lafazanos (Wraith), David Nykl (Dr. Zelenka), Santo Lombardo (Athosian), Agam Darshi (Athosian), Andre Benjamin (Guard), Phoenix Ly (Yamato)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

A test of a new virtual reality combat simulator leaves O’Neill and his team a little underwhelmed; the simulation software “learns” from the combat experience of its users, but so far, it’s only “learned” from Dr. Lee and his team of experts - perfectly good scientists, but not exactly soldiers. Teal’c agrees to work with them in refining their simulator into something more useful, but using his extensive knowledge of encounters with alien aggressors, the simulation becomes much tougher with Teal’c as its player. After he replays - and loses - several rounds, Teal’c finally opts to use a failsafe exit that will get him out of the simulation, only to find that he can’t even escape. In the real world, the simulation device - derived from alien technology - is ensuring that Teal’c’s real body feels at least some of the pain of his series of defeats. If left attached to the simulator too long, Teal’c faces a very real death.

written by Damian Kindler
directed by Martin Wood
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Bill Dow (Dr. Lee), Andrew Airlie (Dr. Carmichael), Gary Jones (Chief Sgt. Walter Harriman), Dan Shea (Sgt. Siler), Dan Payne (Kull Warrior)

Notes: The simulator is derived from the technology used by The Gamekeeper in season 2.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

During a survey of a planet in the Pegasus Galaxy, a jumper carrying Sheppard, Teyla, McKay and Ford crashes when its systems all simultaneously fail. Even portable equipment is rendered useless by an electromagnetic field. When they set out to disable the field so they can repair the jumper and leave, a group of camouflaged, armed children take them prisoner and bring them to their village. There, Sheppard meets the oldest of this curious society’s “elders” - a young man named Keras who is only hours away from his 25th birthday, which is marked by a ritual suicide. Keras and his people believe that this sacrifice is what keeps the Wraith from attacking them. But when Rodney finds a ZPM powering the field that caused the jumper to crash, a different picture emerges. Rodney is eager to bring the ZPM back to Atlantis for study, to see if it can help in the city’s defense, not even considering the possibility that the field he has just disabled is the real source of the village’s invincibility. And once the field is down, a Wraith homing device begins transmitting…

written by Martin Gero
directed by David Winning
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Courtenay J. Stevens (Keras), Dominic Zamprogna (Aries), Jessica Amlee (Cleo), Sam Charles (Casta), Alana Husband (Ennea), Shane Meier (Neleus), Julie Patzwald (Pelias), Craig Veroni (Dr. Grodin), Calum Worthy (Hunter Kid)

Notes: Dr. Zelenka pays his first visit to this planet in the second season episode Critical Mass, with even more colorful results than Sheppard’s team. Dominic Zamprogna has appeared in the new Battlestar Galactica as well, playing a reporter in Litmus and Viper pilot Jammer during the second season.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

A visit to a planet with steam-age technology provides Sheppard and his team with an unlikely weapon against the Wraith - a protein that helps humans resist the enzyme injected by the Wraith that allows feeding to begin. McKay is skeptical of the effectiveness of any anti-Wraith advance that could come from such a relatively primitive society. But when Dr. Beckett joins forces with Perna, the chief scientist working on the serum, he’s able to advance her research by decades in a matter of hours with his technology. But when talk of human trials begins, without any extensive testing of the drug’s side effects, Beckett and Sheppard are uneasy. Dr. Weir only reluctantly agrees to the plan of exposing the serum to Atlantis’ only Wraith prisoner via a terminally ill patient. That test seems to be a success, until it becomes apparent that the drug won’t just resist the Wraith, it will kill them - and it won’t do its human hosts any favors either. If Beckett can’t find a cure, an entire society may become extinct without a single Wraith attack.

story by Mary Kaiser
teleplay by Damian Kindler
directed by Brad Turner
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Alan Scarfe (Chancellor Druhin), Allison Hossack (Perna), Paul McGillion (Dr. Beckett), James Lafazanos (Wraith), Neil Maffin (Merell), Darren Hird (Dying Patient), Dean Marshall (Sgt. Bates), Edmond Kato Wong (Technician)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Teyla introduces the Atlantis team to a simple agrarian society known as the Genii. Sheppard leads a team to bargain with the Genii for food, but their leader, Cowen, seems more interested in trading for explosives than the medicines that are offered. Sheppard and McKay return to Atlantis to discuss the altered terms of the trade with Dr. Weir, who is understandably upset at the prospect that her expedition is becoming arms dealers. As they make their way back to the Genii village, McKay and Sheppard find traces of radioactivity, and follow those readings to a hatch leading to an underground bunker that, while still primitive by Atlantis’ standards, is evidence of a higher technology than what the Genii seem to have on the surface of their planet. With the truth exposed, the Genii drop the pretense of being simple farmers - or of welcoming Sheppard’s team. Their society lives in vast underground chambers, where they hide from the Wraith and are slowly developing the equivalent of early Cold War-era atomic weapons. McKay’s tactless criticism of the Genii nukes convinces Cowen that there may be some value in joining forces with Atlantis after all, but trust seems to be in short supply in the well-stocked Genii arsenal.

written by Peter DeLuise
directed by Brad Turner
music by Joel Goldsmith

Guest Cast: Erin Chambers (Sora), Ari Cohen (Tyrus), Colm Meaney (Cowen), Darren Hird (Cocooned Victim), Craig Veroni (Dr. Grodin)

Notes: Guest star Colm Meaney is a genre favorite, having co-starred in all seven seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as Chief O’Brien, a role that he originated as an unnamed Enterprise crewmember in the very first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987.

LogBook entry by Earl Green