Prometheus (episode)

"Prometheus" is the eleventh episode of the sixth season of Stargate SG-1.

Synopsis
A journalist named Julia Donovan gets wind of the project codenamed "Prometheus". Knowing her capabilities, Stargate Command manages to give her a tour of Prometheus, Earth's new ship mixed with Human and Alien technologies. However, Donovan's crew later hijacks the ship, and demands Adrian Conrad and Frank Simmons.

Previously on Stargate SG-1
Adrian Conrad acquires a Goa'uld symbiote from Colonel Harold Maybourne in order to cure his Berchart's syndrome. After the symbiote is implanted, the Goa'uld is captured by Colonel Frank Simmons.

Plot
While going to her car, Major Samantha Carter is stopped by a journalist named Julia Donovan, who questions her about a secret project dubbed "Prometheus." She catches Sam’s attention after brandishing a sample of the metal, Trinium. Carter simply shrugs it off and drives away. Back at Stargate Command, she informs Major General George S. Hammond about the incident. The general reveals their next course of action.

In the meantime, Miss Donovan is contacted by Major Paul Davis, with the intention of stopping the story’s release. However, she couldn’t care less and reasons the story must be big if the military is trying to cover it up. Davis informs Hammond and partners with Carter to go confront Miss Donovan at her network. Although they are able to stop the network from distributing it, she threatens to go to a foreign network. Her producer Al Martell then bargains to get the exclusive rights, and agrees to reveal the source of the information in exchange for allowing Donovan and a camera crew into the facility. The SGC then plans to double-cross her and destroy the video after getting the source.

As agreed upon, Donovan, her producer, and a camera crew are brought to a secret location in the desert. They travel in an elevator down several hundred feet and are confronted with the Prometheus, the first starship of the Air Force. Carter explains the background and technology behind the Prometheus. While Donovan and her producer are led through the ship (where they are also shown the engine room and the hyperspace engine), the camera crew stuns two guards with a Zat'nik'tel and starts to commandeer the ship. Unaware of the camera crew’s duplicity, Carter is unable to contact the bridge and goes to check the situation while Jonas Quinn watches the two reporters. Carter is then attacked by two of the camera crew but is able to escape to a storage room on deck 7, which is then sealed by the intruders. In the meantime, Jonas wants to retake control of the ship, doing anything he can to slow them down, but he and the journalists are stopped by the intruders. The producer reveals himself as an agent working with the camera crew and helps them gain a firm foothold in the ship. The rogue camera crew activates the hyperdrive engines, and Jonas determines they're attempting to overload them in order to create an explosion.

Outside the hangar, Major Davis informs a furious Colonel Jack O'Neill about the situation, when they are contacted by the hijackers. They demand the release and delivery of Frank Simmons and Adrian Conrad. While events transpire outside the ship, Carter is able to contact the outside by modifying some equipment found in the room she's sealed in to create a radio, and devises a plan to sever control of the sub-light engines. Inside the ship, the hijackers threaten to kill their hostages if Jonas doesn't fix the settings vital to hyper drive functions that he modified in his attempts to slow them down. The producer protests the hijackers' callous nature and is swiftly killed. Jonas, to spare further loss of life, submits to their demands. As promised, Adrian Conrad (still controlled by a Goa'uld) and Simmons appear and are brought aboard Prometheus. Simmons takes the bridge and they start the ship, while Carter, after a quite a while, is able to free herself from the storage room using a plasma cutter to cut through a bulkhead. O'Neill and Teal'c plan to get to the ship themselves in a Death Glider.

When the Prometheus has left Earth, Simmons informs the hostages about what will happen now. Carter is finally able to sever the connection to the control relay for the sub-light engines but is then confronted by three of the hijackers, who are quickly immobilized by O'Neill and Teal'c. It’s too late as they are unable to stop the ship from entering hyperspace. On the bridge, the Goa'uld attacks Simmons and a female hijacker, yet Simmons is able to subdue the enemy. Simmons, who is now controlled by the Goa'uld, attacks O'Neill and Teal'c while they are trying to free the hostages. O'Neill succeeds in opening an emergency airlock that sucks Simmons into the vacuum of space.

Afterwards, SG-1 meets the hijackers, who divulge their original plan, to search for a cache of advanced weaponry. However, the group appears to be lost somewhere in space with no way to get home when an Asgard ship appears. Thor beams onto the bridge. He explains that the Asgard have been monitoring all hyperspace activity around Earth and tracked them and pleads for their help … to defeat the Replicators who have overrun the Asgard homeworld.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Notable Quotes
Carter: To tell you the truth, sir, I didn't know what to say. She caught me completely off-guard.

Hammond: You did the right thing, Major. Our official policy is to deny everything.

Carter: Unfortunately in this case I don't think it's going to be enough.

Donovan: Al, why are you doing this?

Martell: They're paying me.

Donovan: We're supposed to be friends.

Martell: They're paying me a lot.

Davis: Colonel, you either give me what I need and we make arrangements, or we make a U-turn and I take you right back to your box.

Simmons: Seems to me that you're in a bit of a bind now, aren't you? Fortunately for you, I am willing to board the X-303 in the interest of saving lives. Of course I'm going to need a change of clothes. Something nice.

O'Neill: Okay. Let's go home.

Carter: Well, sir, it's possible that when the hyper-drive was brought online no one fully accounted for the instability of the Naquadria.

O'Neill: Who does?

Carter: Well what I'm saying is, if I don't know where we are, I can't plot a course for home.

Carter: Sir, based on the amount of time we spent in hyperspace, I'd estimate we're at least twelve hundred light years from Earth.

O'Neill: How does that help us?

Carter: Ah, it doesn't.

O'Neill: Can you help us out here?

Thor: It is in fact we who need your help. The Asgard home world has been overrun by replicators. We have need of both you and your ship.

Goofs

 * When Major Samantha Carter is trying to get through the corridor the wind is blowing against her, yet when she opens the hatch door, it swings open against the wind. Additionally, assuming a typical atmosphere of 200 millibars of pure oxygen, the force necessary to close the door would be equal to a weight of close to 9,000 lbs (a mass of nearly 4,000 kg)

Character

 * Julia Donovan

Death

 * Frank Simmons
 * Adrian Conrad
 * Adrian Conrad's Goa'uld

In other languages

 * French: Prométhée (Prometheus)
 * Italian: Prometeo (Prometheus)
 * Spanish: Prometeo (Prometheus)
 * Czech: Prometheus