Solitudes

Solitudes is the eighteenth episode of the first season of Stargate SG-1.

Plot
Just as the SGC has an unscheduled activation and receive a GDO signal, Dr. Jackson and Teal'c come flying through the gate. A surge of energy follows, and the gate shuts off without O'Neill or Carter coming through. Jackson and Teal'c do not understand: they were in a group.

Initially unconscious, O'Neill and Carter wake to discover themselves in an icy cave. O'Neill is suffering from a broken leg, and Carter splints it with some difficulty. With O'Neill only able to move short distances, Carter begins to explore the cave and notes that she can see light at some of the fissures in the roof, indicating they are not buried very deeply, although the fissures are too narrow to reach their ends. With limited supplies of food and fuel, survival will be short. Adding to the problem is that they have a small number of batteries for their flashlights, and there is not enough light to move about easily without them.

At the SGC, Dr. Jackson and Teal'c theorize that since SG-1 was taking fire from a group of Jaffa as they tried to get back to earth, several staff weapon blasts may have struck the gate, causing the surge of energy. This created a malfunction and caused the wormhole to jump to a nearby gate, which Dr. Jackson theorizes is somewhere along the line between the planet, P4A-771, and Earth. O'Neill and Carter are trapped "somewhere out there." Several SG teams are sent to try to find the two, to no avail. General Hammond informs Jackson that he regretfully has to declare them MIA and stop the search, as they cannot endlessly search for them.

Meanwhile in the icy cave, Carter and O'Neill attempt to sleep. They have to combine body heat to make it through the night. Which is hard to do with O'Neill's broken ribs. They start discussing they won't have any regrets except dying.



Meanwhile, in the icy cave, Carter finds the gate's DHD embedded in ice and they begin to chip it out. O'Neill has trouble doing this, and reveals that he also has a broken rib. They eventually unearth the DHD, but when Carter tries to dial Earth, the Stargate does not activate.

Back at the SGC, Jackson realizes that there was one planet they had dismissed and they shouldn't have - Earth. Remembering that the first time they opened the gate(Stargate, the movie), it used to shake a lot. A check of recent seismic activity across the globe reveals rumblings in Antarctica at precisely the same moment SG-1 returned, and these rumblings would be explicable by the activation of a second Stargate on Earth in Antarctica. The gate cannot be dialed from the Stargate at the SGC because the addresses are too similar, the gates can only dial to other worlds, not to another gate on the same planet. Even if the seventh symbol looked different, the coordinates would be exactly the same. The same problem is preventing Carter from activating their gate. She keeps getting a busy signal.

In the icy cave, O'Neill tells Carter to climb out of the cavern and attempt to find shelter. With some difficulty, she climbs out only to discover ice plains as far as the eye can see. Discouraged, she radios O'Neill saying, "It's an ice planet!" She returns and the two of them fall unconscious, only to be re-awakened to the sight of SGC members. It turns out, the Stargate did malfunction, but the wormhole jumped to a previously unknown second Stargate in the ice of Antarctica. The second Stargate is later secured.

Goofs

 * Factual errors: When the gate is fixed after the overload, the SGC redial P4A-771 to search for Jack and Sam, but on the Dialing Supercomputer, the chevrons dialed are those for Abydos [The first ever planet visited in the Stargate film - dialed with chevrons: Taurus, Serpens Caput, Capricorn, Monoceros, Sagittarius, Orion] and not that of P4A-771.
 * Goofs: In the opening scene Harriman informs General Hammond that it is SG-1 returning through the gate before the gate has opened (and thus before they could have sent an IDC to identify themselves). Although, despite the fact that SG-1 was returning under fire, it could have been sometime around SG-1's scheduled dial-in, so Harriman may have made an assumption.
 * On the other hand, General Hammond stated clearly that no team was due for 24 hours and SG-1 had just dialed out. Harriman must have assumed SG-1 ran into trouble. (Or he was grossly misinformed in assuming a scheduled return).