Stargate SG-1/Recap/S1 E8 Brief Candle

Series:Stargate SG-1 Episode: Season 1, Episode 8 Title:"Brief Candle" Previous: The Nox Next: Thor's Hammer Recapper: Shadow Penguin

Episode opens with a man praying to a statue of a god with a lightning bolt riding in a chariot in front of the stargate. Light's flash and SG-1 arrives on the planet. The man hides, believing them to be gods. The team finds him hiding with his very pregnant wife, and help is needed delivering the baby. Everyone looks at Carter, but Daniel ends up being the "expert" having done it once before. Very thankful, the couple brings them back to their village where a huge party is going on. Turns out that all these people do is enjoy life and party, for everyone is given 100 days of bliss. During the party, O'neill is fed a strange cake by a woman who had been making eyes at him. He becomes intoxicated or something and the woman performs an elaborate dance for him and brings him to her bed. Later on people all walk into the building and just pass out into a deep sleep. The team is confused by this, even Jack who seems to be snapping out of it. Then he passes out asleep as well.

As soon as the sun rises, they all awaken. To their surprise, they find that the baby they had delivered the day before is now walking around like any 1 year old boy. Then they realize that the people on the planet are aging very rapidly, and it seems that O'neill is now being affected as well. Daniel and Teal'c find a fancy Goa'uld tablet in the base of the statue, which describes what happened to these people. A Goa'uld tampered with them so that they would age very rapidly in order that he could return in a few hundred years to see how humans evolve. At the risk of bringing back another virus, the team obtains blood samples from Jack and leaves him on the planet.

Jack continues to age rapidly into grey hair and wrinkles, and gets to know his new woman. Dr. Frasier and Carter discover nanomachines in the blood that appear to be causing the rapid aging. They have no idea how to stop it, so they send through supplies to Jack and say their goodbyes via a little video recording, since they can't come back and risk being infected themselves.

Despondent, Jack lectures the people about their so called god, and how they have been robbed of tens thousands of days of their lives, since they only live 100 days. He gets them riled up and they pull down the statue. Jack and the woman wander off away from the village, and when night falls, they find that they didn't fall asleep. It turns out the statue holds a transmitter to make everyone fall asleep and wake up, and the wake up part is broken. Jack calls Earth and they come back and figure out how to wake everyone up. With the transmitter now disabled, the nanomachines don't do anything, and they are all free to live their full, years long lives.