Brief Candle

Jeff joins us to discuss the Stargate SG1 episode "Brief Candle" as we see Jack suffer the consequences of unprotected interaction with a cake offering young woman.

On the planet Argos the team find a small community surrounding an impressive temple like structure devoted to a "god" named Pelops. Their first interaction is with a couple ( Alekos and Thetys ) who are in the process of giving birth, Daniel turns out to have the most experience of being a midwife and soon a newborn's cry echoes throughout the temple. They are invited to what appears to be a celebration and a very attractive young woman named Kynthia ( Bobbie Phillips ) seems to take a shine to Jack and offers him so cake/pizza/foodstuff and of course he accepts and hilarity ensues. Jack is led away and then Kynthia performs a dance for him, Jack's vision seems to blur and he then finds himself some time later sharing a bed with Kynthia and devoid of everything but his dog tags. 

It turns out that these people initially age very quickly (the baby from the day before it now a well developed toddler) and the natural lifespan is just one hundred days but certainly lived to it's full extent. A further complication emerges as Jack didn't use protection when he was with Kynthia and the technology the Goa'uld controlled these people with is now infesting Jack. He begins to age and soon becomes the oldest person in the community thanks to the partial manipulation of his genetics by what turns out to be a nano type virus engineered by Pelops in the hopes of creating a perfect host. Jack orders the team to leave him behind and he tries to come to terms with his fate with Kynthia at his side but he still finds time to lead a revolt against the dictates of Pelops.

Brief Candle is a tale of two halves, the story has potential for some serious depth but a single episode doesn't really have the time to tell the tale and the budget alas worked well on the location shooting but the temple itself was pretty cheap looking. Old age makeup for Jack was pretty good and well Bobbie as the temptress Kynthia was impressive so overall an above average first season episode which never really reached it's potential.

Many thanks to Jeff for making his first appearance on the Stargate Archives after being a feature on the Gatecast over the years. If you want to join me for an hour and talk Stargate then please get in touch, currently exploiting the old contact list but would love to get some new voices on the show. As always any ratings and reviews on itunes would be most welcome and continued thanks to everyone that shares the show info on social media.

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