The First Commandment (Stargate SG-1)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stargate SG-1 episode
“The First Commandment”

Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 5
Guest star(s)	William Russ as Captain Jonas Hanson Roger R. Cross as Lieutenant Connor Zahf Hajee as Jamala Adrian Hughes as Lieutenant Baker D. Neil Mark as Frakes Darcy Laurie as Cave-Dweller
Writer(s)	Robert C. Cooper
Director	Dennis Berry
Production no.	105
Original airdate	August 22, 1997
Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"The Broca Divide"	"Cold Lazarus"
Episode chronology

"The First Commandment" is an episode of the science fiction television series Stargate SG-1.

1 Plot
2 Quotes
3 Notes
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details for Stargate SG-1 Season 1 follow.

The episode starts with two members of an SG team running away frightened and being pursued by multitudes of natives wearing imposing domed masks on their heads and wielding spears. However one of them is then captured and shot by a soldier with a gun and then set on fire. Later SG-1 is sent to the planet P3X-513 after SG-9 is declared MIA. Daniel Jackson is soon thereafter attacked by the frightened Lieutenant Connor, the surviving officer from the earlier chase and witness to the murder of his team-mate Franks. After they set up a camp, he explains that SG-9's leader, Captain Jonas Hanson, has convinced the planet's primitive inhabitants that he is a god, and now has them working for him to build him a temple. All who oppose him are captured and tied up in the sun to be slowly burned to death by the planet's high ultraviolet radiation levels. It originally began as "playing along" for anthropological reasons, but after he disappeared for two days Jonas went too far with it and actually came to believe himself to be a god as well. With the assistance of a team-mate, Baker, he killed the remainder of the team.

Captain Samantha Carter, having previously been engaged to Jonas, tells Daniel that Hanson is a man who always needs control. In the night, Connor is captured and tied in the sun to die. While Colonel Jack O'Neill investigates, Sam helps a young boy who is being beaten by Baker and is also captured. When she is brought before Jonas, who is clearly suffering from megalomania and low response to fear-stimuli psychopathic behaviour, he is unwaveringly convinced that he is doing the right thing by bringing the local inhabitants out of the cave-dwelling squalor they live in, even if he is instead working them to death in the sun to build him a temple. Jack, Daniel and Teal'c corner Jamala (the slave Sam rescued) according to whom Jonas has found a device that, when activated, will "turn the sky orange" - this is surmised to be an ultra-violet radiation shielding mechanism left behind by the Goa'uld. By making his people build a temple he is buying himself time to work out how to turn on the device and prove himself a god when he 'saves' them; he admits to the captured Samantha his inability to do so, and then forces her to work on it. As she stalls for time, she tries to force Jonas to surrender at gunpoint but finds herself unable to shoot him, and he takes the gun away.

Meanwhile, the rest of SG-1 is informed by Jamala about Jonas' plan. Teal'c is aware of this particular form of technology and determines a second device must lie on the otherside of the valley, a repeater of sorts to bounce the shielding back and forth and stabilise it. Daniel and Teal'c go off into the forest and find the second half of the device sealed in an underground chamber. Meanwhile Jack attempts to rescue Connor from his stake in the middle of the valley quarry. Now wearing Jamala's clothing, he unties Connor but is captured by Baker and taken to Jonas' cave, where Jonas threatens his life in front of Sam. She caves into Jonas' demands and activates the device producing a pillar of orange light which strikes the roof but does nothing else.

Hanson decides to send both Jack and Connor back through the Stargate to Earth - however he doesn't intend to send the IDC signal to deactivate the iris. He gathers the natives at the 'circle of the gods' which he has set on its side so the wormhole opens vertically, and tells the people that he is sending the demons back to hell. Before this plan can be carried out, however, Daniel arrives and tells the natives that Hanson is not a god, that he doesn't wield magic, that he only uses machines. To prove his point Jamala uses Tealc's staff weapon on Baker. Jonas tells them he can make the sky orange and turns on the device but the pillar of orange light that erupts from it, does nothing. Daniel tells the people there are two devices and that anybody can use them, Jamala fires the staff weapon into the air and Teal'c sees it and activates the second unit. The shield forms in the sky, and the people of the planet come to understand that Jonas is an impostor who has been working them into their graves, as one they fall upon Jonas and in the ensuing fight Jack, Connor and Sam free themselves and the natives toss Jonas through the gate before anybody can send the IDC signal.

Later as SG-1 and Connor ready to leave P3X-513, Sam is brooding over her inability to end Jonas' reign when she had the chance but Jack assures her "killing a man is no badge of honour" and doing so would only bring her closer to becoming what Jonas was. Jack points out the Sixth Commandment as opposed to Jonas' distortion of the First - No Killing.

[edit] Quotes

O'Neill: Does it say "Colonel" anywhere on my uniform?

After Connor and Carter both refuse his instructions to go back to the SGC to report in. See Wormhole X-Treme! for a possibly related in-joke regarding this quote.

Jackson: This tastes like chicken...
Carter: So what's wrong with it?
Jackson: It's macaroni and cheese...

The chicken is a possible reference to Daniel Jackson's comments about the taste of Abydonian food in the Stargate film.

O'Neill: I generally read one commandment, and I think it's the first.
Carter: "I am the Lord your God, and you shall take no other gods before me?"
O'Neill: Okay, so it's not the first one. I'm talking about the "No Killing" one. No matter what the reason, every time you break it, you take one step closer to Hanson.

[edit] Notes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The First Commandment (Stargate SG-1)

The title refers to the Ten Commandments, the first of which may be summarised as "Do not worship false gods".
This episode sets up many of the strong themes throughout all seasons of SG-1, those of what it is to be a god, to deserve worship and reverence, and what it is to be a false god.
This was the first episode of Stargate SG-1 written by Robert C. Cooper, who would later become an executive producer and co-created the spin-off series Stargate:Atlantis.