Stargate SG:1 - 10x07 - Counterstrike[SPOILERS]

ixoy

So what did you make of this 201st (one of the last ever ) episodes of Stargate:SG-1 - "Counterstrike"?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

I haven't seen it yet but I'll be sure and stop back when I do.

OmegaRed

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

Not the greatest SG1 episode but atleast in keeping with the story arc! It just annoys me the next week it will be something completly unrelated to the ori story. Why cant they just keep the story going? Is it budget reasons?

Dont like how we are being constantly told how powerful the ori are and how doom and glum it is!

BKtje

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

I must say i enjoyed it and will deffo miss this when its gone

cotwold

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

Whats all this talk of "miss this when its gone" and "one of the last ever". Just because the Sci fi channel had cancelled the show it doesnt mean it wont go on. Executive producer Robert Cooper isn't counting Stargate SG-1 out yet and is considering moving the show back to its original home on the Showtime channel.

BKtje

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

aye i know, expecting the worse but hoping for the best.

DingChavez

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

Col.Mitchel sees Ori TV: "Does this thing get Showtime?"

ixoy

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

DingChavez wrote:

Col.Mitchel sees Ori TV: "Does this thing get Showtime?"

Was that said in this episode? Or are ya making a nod to "The Serpent's Lair"?

Anyhoo, I definetely like this one - shows a nice progression in the Ori arc by throwing the Jaffa and Firefly's Inara into the mix. The Jaffa's move, echoing their old despotic rulers, is tragic but something we saw coming in their actions in S9. It made a tragic sense that they'd abuse the power on Dakara and retain some of the arrogancy they saw in their Goa'uld masters. I doubt we've seen the last of the Free Jaffa nation but I imagine they'll be a bit quieter now (and, possibly, allow a greater place for Bra'tac to serve again or even Teal'c if they wish to do so for the post S10 world).

Vala Jr. is fun enough, even if I'm smiling at the 2nd appearance from a Firefly regular. The way she so effortlessly despatched the Jaffa initially that were attacking Daniel and Vala, and the subsequent way she ignored the Dakaran weapon and annihilated it, speaks volumes about her power. Oh and might I add that I really liked Vala's reaction to her daughter here? The guilt was well played by CB and she was nicely restrained as she realized the power that had been unleashed. Definite character growth.

Everyone was on fine form this week and Mitchell is ever more feeling his own seperate character (IMO). If they maintained this quality, and don't get a proper resolution, I will be truly peeved.

Pugsley

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

Excellent episode imo.

It advanced the story arc nicely, and was generally good to watch. The Jaffa being arrogant to all around is well displayed (as pointed by ixoy), and their paranoia aswell, considering their currently getting their arse handed to them the leaders of the Jaffa nation dont want to lose their power and will blame anyone to hold on to it. Was (pleasently) surprised to see Inara from Firefly in it aswell, the actress fitted both the younger versions of her we saw, and definately some elements of Vala aswell, she carried herself very smugly as could be expected from what is ultimately a spoilt child with all the power in the universe who has been given legions of troops to take over a galaxy (I'd hardly call what their doing 'converting').

Ixoy mentioned Vala's charecter growth, but I also noticed a change in Daniels and Vala's relationship, before it was Vala being a happy child and Daniel shrugging her off, now that Vala has matured for lack of a better word, due to what her daughter is doing, and is capable of doing in future, Daniel seems to be seeing eye to eye with her, the last scene shown this very nicely imo.

Anyway, excellent episode, more of this sort of thing.

Winters

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

Loved the episode. I really do enjoy the Orii storylines and hope they stop with so many filler episodes and give us a good run of Orii related episodes.

As for the episode, Vala is really starting to grow. Her character is getting better with each episode and its lovely to see herself and Daniel together. Also, srsly ... Vala + Daughter *purrs*

Sam seemed a little lost on her own I thought. Her character didnt do too much in the episode.

robnubis

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

well she did get a nice oppurutunity to plug the Dell XPS by using one to interface witht he Ori ship!! nice product placement.

one thing that has dissapointed me so far is that we havent seen much ground battle based action from SG1 in a while, its always space battles and nothign else lately...personally i wanna see SG1 P-90's spraying against Ori warriors, possibly a nod to the old fire fights against the Jaffa.

Really good episode imo, very happy, especially since the last Stargate episode i watched was th eone with wackey weir in the insane asylum, ffs what a boring episode, RDA was the only reason i bothered downloading.

Kepp things moving in this direction...

Vulture

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

Sg1 dodging Jaffa with big boots again got to love it for nostalgia's sake. I'm giving it a 4 simply for the crazy woman who kills 4 jaffa, then brings one back to life to torture and kill him again. Thats the kind of baddie they sorly needed instead of the faceless ori and their leigon of followers. How the hell your ment to stop her I have no idea you could try a nuke but i dont think it would have enough kick to it.

is_that_so

Poor - So if this is the quality we can expect, maybe the news is a good thing

Not bad as this season goes- better than recent episodes. At least the Ori arc moved somewhere other than people prone and chanting.

User45701

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

I thought that this and the pegasus project where both amazing episodes. so far ive been saying i dont mind the ori as bad guys it dosent bother me if its them or wraith but the more episodes like this and pegasus project the more im loving the ori stroy arc. Great episode 9/10

Ivan

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

Quite an enjoyable episode, even if it was incredibly predictable. From the moment I saw the shockwave on the planet in the first scenes I knew almost exactly how the episode would go.

That said, as Ixoy and others pointed out, the character development, specifically between vala, her daughter and daniel, was rather excellent.

As for the power of Vala Jr. (haha good name for her ) the priors have already displayed telekinesis (although perhaps not on this scale), she didnt really display telepathy per se and the locket supposedly protected her from the Dakara weapon. So that really only leaves bringing people back to life, which I'm not entirely sure she did... Although it would be tremendously cool, if thats what actually happened, but it seemed to me more like she telekinetically choked the Jaffa until they pass out and then awoke one using similar telekinetic methods. Which, if true, doesnt seem all that impressive.

So, I'm forced to question, what exactly is so different between her and the priors?

One thing that really bugged me, actually its about the whole Stargate franchise and it was epitomised in this episode, 'the stomping Jaffa syndrome'. Seriously, while patrolling a ship (and in many instances searching for boarders) surely stealth is the better option than stomping around the place, alerting everyone to your presence long enough to give them time to hide...

Whats more, if you watch the actual scene again, the stomping noise seems to have been added in afterwards as it doesnt match up with the actual movements of the Jaffa nor do they 'march' in the loosest sense of the term.

Perhaps I'm being pedantic but it has always bugged me!

Still, an enjoyable episode and great to see Firefly acters still getting work!

Vulture

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

Ivan wrote:

One thing that really bugged me, actually its about the whole Stargate franchise and it was epitomised in this episode, 'the stomping Jaffa syndrome'. Seriously, while patrolling a ship (and in many instances searching for boarders) surely stealth is the better option than stomping around the place, alerting everyone to your presence long enough to give them time to hide...
Whats more, if you watch the actual scene again, the stomping noise seems to have been added in afterwards as it doesnt match up with the actual movements of the Jaffa nor do they 'march' in the loosest sense of the term.

Perhaps I'm being pedantic but it has always bugged me!

Jaffa and their methods and weapons are designed to cause fear they are not ment to be efficent otherwise their staffs would have an auto fire setting. Jafa are the same everywhere (excluding rebel groups) their are no special forces, stealth troops etc. They just throw people at a problem, with reliable and powerfull weapons, think russian.

mcgarnicle

Not too sure what to make of this episode really, it was enjoyable but there were quite a few things about it that bugged me. It really didn't advance the story all that much, by the end of the episode everything seemed to be back to normal.

There were some more nice space scenes in this episode but like someone else said I think it's time we saw some good old style fire fights between entrenched humans and heaps of Ori troops, its something that I for one miss, I'd also love to see some of those Ori fighters that we got a brief glimpse of a few episodes back in action.

There were a few things that bugged me about this episode... the first was the fact that both times the Dakara weapon was fired off SG-1 was just about to be killed and then rescued just in time by being beemed away, honestly this has become an extremely tired plot device, it now seems that every tense situation is resolved by simply beeming the team out of harm's way. I know this is a cheesy sci-fi show but all these convenient rescues are starting to grate, it is becoming rather boring and is making it harder to suspend my disbelief and really get into the episodes.

The end of the episode was pretty bad too, it bugged me how the fall of Langara and Hebredan, two pretty substantial planets in the stargate universe, particularly langara, was just brushed over. Honestly, this was almost insulting, it reminded me of an episode in DS9 when we are informed all of a sudden that Betazed has just been taken over by the dominion, my reaction then as now was "What? That sounds important, can I have some more please", of course I couldn't then and can't now. I just think that if you want to name drop important places from the show's history then either do it properly or don't bother at all. This also shows why this season is so frustrating for me, there are plenty of ideas out there, showing either of these planets deal with the Ori would have been far more interesting than some of the filler rubbish that has been so far and is pencilled in for the next few weeks. The ideas are there they just seem determined to balance out the serious ori arc with as many pointless comic relief episodes, which in the main are not funny.

The episode was topped off by Daniel's line where he likens being a mother to being a battle hardened warrior, ignoring the fact that Vala hasn't actually mothered this child at all this was a truely awfull line. It made me think of that infamous Carter line from episode one about her reproductive organs being on the inside, a line that they took the piss out of in last weeks episode. The fact they are still turning out equally bad lines now shows how the writers really are deluded in the belief that they have gotten better over the years. To be honest this episode just made me glad the series has been cancelled, not because I want stargate cancelled, but because it might give the writers a kick up the hole and make them realise that, in reality, they aren't all that great and all the self ingratiating jokes are pointless, pretentious crap that needs to be done away with. Just as a side I thought "200" was horribly unfunny.

Sorry to prattle on but I've gone off on one at this stage, why are they acting like the Ori are unstoppable and invincible when, at this point in the series, they have lost 1 ship which combined with the loss of all the crew from the ship in this episode means they have lost about 50% of their forces, surely unnaceptable losses in any military campaign.

robnubis

Average - Doesn't mean I want cancellation!

^ouch, buddy, maybe a few spaces here and there.

episode 200 was class.

mcgarnicle

robnubis wrote:

^ouch, buddy, maybe a few spaces here and there.

episode 200 was class.

Hope that's better, didn't check it after I posted and hadn't realised just how cluttered it was... sorry.

senordingdong

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

Well I loved this.
Another super episode.
Was genuinly shocked to see Dakarra fall.

But as said above...wish they had dedicated more episodes to the fall of planets like Langara and Hebridon instead of the likes of 'Uninvited' etc...
Oh and I also miss the awl P-90 action.

Kojak

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

An excellent episode, IMO. The one thing I didn't like were the references to Dr. Phil - that was just annoying.

The destruction of Takara was unexpected as it now means the Jaffa are of no real help in the fight against the Ori. The discussion between Daniel and Vala about his wife sharee showed a continuity with the wqhole SG1 storyline that has, sadly, been missing for most of the last few years. Thank God Mitchell wasn't acting like Jack in this episode - I think this the reason most SG1 fans have difficulty in liking the guy.

Its a pity that the series was to be cancelled. On the evidence of this episode it would have lasted another season, provided they kept the quality to this pretty high standard.

senordingdong

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

Another season yeah, but it definatly wouldn't have been any better then this one.

senordingdong

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

How could you possibly think that episode was filler?
It was clearly a tie in with the main story which happens to be the Ori invasion.
And what the hell are you talking about with blasts of plasma?

cotwold

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

senordingdong wrote:

How could you possibly think that episode was filler?
It was clearly a tie in with the main story which happens to be the Ori invasion.
And what the hell are you talking about with blasts of plasma?

Woops, sorry meant to post that in another thread. (it was meant for SG Atlanti 0312 Echoes)

senordingdong

Good - This is exactly why we need a S11 because the show produces episodes like this

Ok, well thanks for the spoiler anyway.