Window of Opportunity - Eposode #71
While visiting a new planet, O'Neill and Teal'c inadvertently get trapped in a time loop, which causes them to repeat the past ten hours in their lives over and over again.
NOTES OF INTEREST:
- SG-15 had visited P4X-639 two weeks earlier and brought back reports of increasing solar activity.
- A coronal mass emission, like a giant solar flare, disrupts the planet's magnetic field and increases surface radiation. The alien device draws its energy from the ionization in the atmosphere caused by the geomagnetic storms with recur every 50 years. The beam from the device can access the gate's subspace field in order to create some kind of time inversion outside of subspace. It establishes a simultaneous connection from P4X-639 to 13 other worlds including Earth and Alaris, creating a subspace bubble in which everything is cut off from the normal flow of time, resulting in a continuous loop repeating every 6 to 10 hours.
- The writings on the walls and the altar are a variation of the writings of the Ancients, similar to Latin. The equivalent of 400 pages of text includes a planetary history and description of the alien device. The translation revealed that P4X-639 was once a colony of the Ancients. It thrived for thousands of years until it was struck with some unspecified cataclysm. The inhabitants built a time machine to go back and change their own history to avoid their fate, but it didn't work. Instead it caused a short term continuous loop. In the end, they gave up, shut it down, and let the end come.
- Malikai, an archaeologist, had been making visits to the planet for some time, researching the alien device. His wife had died 12 years ago of a congenital heart weakness, and his hope was to go back in time to be with her.
- SG-12's unscheduled early return from Alaris was due to a broken ankle.
- The golfing record was set to the planet Alaris.
- The book O'Neill was reading was Latin for the Novice, by Joseph Mallozzi (a producer of the series and co-writer of the episode).
- Domavatus Vestul Motabilium: "Master of an Uncertain Past"
- Earth had been cut off in the continuous loop for at least three months.
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