AAR - SG1 - s1e4 - the Brocca Divide

Friendly Composition

• SG1 (4 Airmen)

• SG3 (4 Marines)

Enemy Composition

• ~12 Cromags

• 1 nasty virii boi

SG Template: MilOps (Recon); R&D (Disease Busters!)

There's little to no actual military action in this episode, but it's the introduction of SG3, my favorite team, so it earned a footnote on that alone. The other SG teams are the Redshirts of the StarGate Universe and this episode drives that home. Semper I, there USAF!

So, yeah the intro of SG3… Col Makepeace is a Recon Marine judging by the dive bubble and jump wings (very subtle, but accurate nod). First episode since the pilot with any kind of military action to review. Ep2 was the whole Gao'uld spy gig, they do it better later and ep3 was more of a culture-clash diplomacy theme. The NVGs are sad… super old (show was 97). Lot of Jarhead jerk vibe with the teams, which was very 80s sheik. Joint Ops briefings generally tend to be more mature these days, it's in the field where the egos trip.

SG1 takes point and everyone ends up getting stomped by Neanderthals, only to get bailed by SG3. Amusing bit of turn. This nighttime Recon mission, turns into a diplomatic snafu, followed up with a Hazmat fiasco. They hit the whole disease angle with more vigor later in the series, but this does highlight some big issues with HASMAT/CBRN issues that interstellar travel would face. So, everyone extracts after the initial goal of the mission was a bust… and now we realize quarantine might be a needed thing.

Later we get some fraternization when Carter molests Jack. While the episode touches some cultural clash hitpoints, they were a bit light on how the USAF would actually react to the whole event. Strict hazmat procedures would follow every mission, but for expedience of story telling it gets a bare verbal nod from here on out. There's actually quite a lot of procedure that is sidestepped for speed of storytelling, but if SG1 ever got a serious reboot they could pay homage to it off-camera and with some careful camera work. I will say we occasionally do get the obligatory medical screening, but the whole gate room would likely get a Decon treatment, with some sort of segregation from the rest of the base.

From a scientific angle… tidally locked planets would not have a dark side like that. Also, you wouldn't have a forest in the dark or a sharp, crisp divide like that. Very likely one side would be fried bacon, the other a frozen tundra. Maybe some advanced Gao'uld tech kept it livable as an experiment (they were known for doing that).

Again, not that worthy of an AAR, but SG3 pulled it out of me. They have some highs and lows in the series, but under different leadership they have some shining moments late in the series.