Stargate SG-1 (TV Series) Beachhead (2005) User Reviews

Good Episode

[claudio_carvalho · 8/10 · 10 September 2019]

One prior takes a Jaffa occupied planet and the inhabitants disappear. Then he builds a growing force field near the stargate. The SG-1 is assigned to investigate and travels using Prometheus. They meet Gerak and his Jaffa trying to destroy the prior and creating a bigger problem. Meanwhile the notorious Goa'uld Nerus offers his support to the Tauri to defeat the prior and destroy the force field.

"Beachhead" is a good episode of "Stargate SG-1". Vala makes the day with her disregarded solution. The glutton Nerus is a despicable villain but the conclusion with his frustrated reaction is funny. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Beachhead"

Almost there.

[uncleoyster · 9/10 · 1 February 2011]

Almost there, in two senses.

First; the concept for, and execution of, this episode is brilliant. Nerus, the hungry Goa'uld, approaches our heroes with information about an Ori attempt at establishing a beachhead in our galaxy. While this turns out to be a setup with SG-1 and the Free Jaffa powering the Ori force shield and thus actually helping the Ori, thanks to Vala(!) they ultimately fail. Almost there. And you have to love Landry for the way he treats Nerus towards the end of the episode. Nerus' face when he realises his fate is hilarious, and so very rewarding!

Second; this episode could easily be one of my SG-1 favourites. It's THAT close to getting a 10/10 rating. Where does it fail? Gerak and the Free Jaffa. The Jaffa have always been a minor nuisance to me. They're always pigheaded beyond belief, often blind to the simplest logic and thoroughly suspicious, hostile and ungrateful. It gets progressively worse throughout the seasons, and with the election of Gerak as their leader they just say "screw it" and jump the great big Jaffa shark. You would think a race of "proud warriors" obsessed with "honour" and "respect" would be a little more willing to display these traits towards the people who are so directly responsible for their freedom, but no. I have no more patience with them. "Beachhead" would be perfect without the Free Jaffa. So; almost there.

Glutton

[Calicodreamin · 7/10 · 10 April 2022]

The return of the queen and in spectacular fashion. Good concept and developed the Ori baddies storyline and motivations. The acting was decent and good cast chemistry.

Vala Saves the Day

[fcabanski · 5/10 · 2 October 2015]

The episode isn't bad. but it doesn't live up to the promise it showed at the beginning.

One oddity is a prior goes to a Jaffa world to convert the people. When they don't convert, he resists their staff weapons with a force field and shoves them a great distance to their deaths. This force field turns out to be a way for the Ori to power a super gate. But if that was the intention all along, to collapse the planet to power the gate, then why did the prior only start doing it after the people refused to convert? Vala ends up saving the day in what looks like a sacrifice. Don't worry, it isn't.

Sam is back. It's refreshing to have her around, but this time she's only there to explain sciency stuff while helping SG-1 stumble into an Ori scheme. A gluttonous Goa'uld helps set the trap.

In the end Sam speculates Vala traveled to the Ori galaxy through a black hole. If travel is possible through the black hole, why is a super gate necessary? Why didn't the black holes act like black holes acted earlier in the series? Louis Gossett Jaffa speaks in an odd pattern with...random pauses....between...words.

The bottom line is this is an important episode to the Ori story. It isn't bad. But there's a lot of science that's inconsistent with established SG-1 science. That's bad.

Fun episode full of "bad science"

[s1135274 · 5/10 · 22 November 2013]

So yes, this is a fun episode. Sam comes back and goes off world and makes science to save the day. Teal'c doesn't say anything, but looks pensive. Vala and Daniel bicker constantly. Even the Goa'old manage (despite being mostly destroyed) to make a showing and talk about destruction in an evil voice. We even get some (albeit over the phone) snark from Jack. The only thing out of the ordinary here, is Sam doesn't actually save the Day with Science; Vala does it with a good guess, and then gets trapped in another galaxy (way to send off that character...wow). At the End of the Episode, the day is saved, and everything is back to normal...right?

Well...sort of. What I really hated about this episode was all the impossible science. Now I don't mean the nerdy: "That can't happen in the real world! or "In the real world a Worm Hole doesn't work like that!" I'll leave those kinds of complaints to the people who think they understand science. Me, I've just watched a lot of SG1. And when they create a black hole, stuff gets sucked into it. So if a black hole was actually powering the wormhole back to the Ori Galaxy, then the planet should have started slowing down as it was drawn into the wormhole through the Stargate. You know, like what happened before, the last time a Blackhole was close enough to the Stargate to power it. And assuming you could collapse a planet upon itself to form yet ANOTHER Blackhole (nice Macguffin there...so distracted by the black holes that don't do any sucking, I didn't even notice that they create another Blackhole (which also, by the way doesn't suck {which sucks}) without explaining how) that second black hole would start sucking everything towards it in a time-slowing manner (again, as we have seen before). Instead, we are told that the Blackhole sustains the wormhole (which it could based on what has already been shown to be possible) without slowing time down anywhere AND without sucking anything in. And that they need a second Blackhole to sustain the wormhole on this side. Why? Why can't the one Blackhole sustain the Stargate? Furthermore, none of it should matter. Both the Blackhole on the Ori's side should be sucking everything towards it, slowing time as it does and trapping everything in it as it collapses. On the Human side this should also be happening: the Supergate, the Supergate pieces, the debris from the explosions when the Supergate pieces struck Starships, the Starships that stuck around to watch the planet become a Blackhole, and all the people in them should all be sucked into the Blackhole that was just made.

Instead our magic crew of superheros just flies away in their magic ship. And that's the way it's going to be from now on. "Here's an impossible situation!" "Here's some magic!" "Day Saved." "Ratings still good enough to warrant more of this crap?" "OK, Great! See you all next week."