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Plot

Template:Sgspoiler The episode starts with two members of an SG team running away frightened and being persued 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 fire too. 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 tried up in the sun to be slowly burned to death by the planets 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 remained of his 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 squallor they live in, even if he is instead working them to death in the sun to build him a temple. Apparently he has found an old Goa'uld device that, when activated, will "turn the sky orange", according to Jamala (the slave Sam rescued) who Jack, Daniel and Teal'c corner - evidentally some sort of shield that filters against the ambient ultra-violet radiation. 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 gets Sam to look at the device and as she stalls for time, she tries to force Jonas to surrender at gunpoint but finds herself unable to proceed and 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. Threatening to kill Jack, Sam 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 imposter 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 Fifth Commandment as opposed to Jonas' distortion of the First - No Killing.

Quotes

• 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.

• Jack:"I generally read one commandment, and I think it's the first."
  Sam: "I am the Lord your God, and you shall take no other God's before me?"
  Jack: "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."

Notes

• The title refers to the Ten Commandments, the first of which is standardly accepted 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.

External links

• Transcript from StargateWiki. Visited May 8, 2006.
• Transcript from GateWorld. Visited May 8, 2006.
• Transcript from Moon-catching. Transcibed by Lauren Freeman. Visited May 9, 2006.

• Stargate SG-1 episodes