Foothold

"Foothold"

A Five Star Episode from the Third Season of Stargate: SG-1

Hey, was it something we said?! SG-1 returns from an extremely rainy planet in search of the location of Kheb. Not having found anything--except an earful of water for O’Neill--SG-1 reports to the infirmary for their standard post mission check-up by Dr. Fraiser and her team. Each member of SG-1 is given a shot, which instantly knocks them all unconscious. When Teal’c awakens, he finds himself and Major Carter having been separated from the others by the medical team. Still lying on the gurney, he pretends to be asleep while overhearing a conversation between General Hammond and Dr. Frasier, where they discuss how he and Major Carter have not been affected because of Teal’c’s Goa’uld, and the naquadah in Carter’s body.

You don't have enough for the tip?! Don't get cheap on me, Maybourne! Teal’c is further alarmed to see aliens standing around casually with Hammond and Fraiser. Once he gets the chance, Teal’c overpowers his captor and also manages to free Sam, who soon wakes up to find herself in a foothold situation, which is the official term for an alien invasion of the SGC. Yet before they can do anything about it, their escape is detected, and the base goes on alert. Sam manages to get out of the SGC, while Teal’c remains behind to, as he puts it, "purchase her time". On the run from her own people, who have been compromised, a harried Sam gets to Washington D.C., where she contacts the only person she can trust right now: Colonel Maybourne of the NID.

I regret nothing! Foothold is a fun, unrelenting little thriller that invokes the paranoia of the X-Files, as well as the classic alien invasion movies of the 1950s. For a time, Sam is truly alone and on the run (and I almost wish we could have seen more of Sam in this fugitive-type situation), with the nagging doubt that everything she experiences might just be an hallucination brought on by a chemical spill at the SGC. For once the alien threat is truly alien; with the costumes being effectively inhuman and menacing in appearance. These aren’t humans descended from earth--which is what SG-1 routinely deals with--but honest-to-goodness nasty aliens with an agenda, and language, all their own.