"Stargate SG-1" The Enemy Within (TV Episode 1997) ⭐ 7.6 | Action, Adventure, Drama (original) (raw)
Passenger
This episode, although dealing with the formation of the "SG Teams" and looking at Teal'c's character- focuses more on how a Goa'Uld takes an unwilling Host.
I think the idea for this kind of creature came from a Robert Silverberg story called "Passengers". - where people lived in fear of "picking up a passenger", which were Entities that could take over a person, abuse that person, abuse another "passengered" person, and then leave the body. In the story, these entities would simply be seeking pleasure or mischief but they usually didn't harm their hosts, they never killed anybody, their eyes did not glow, and they were not megalomaniac power hungry dictators, but they would still cause the host body to do things it would normally not consider doing while the host consciousness had to sit there and watch it all happen.
That is the only similarity between passengers and Goa'Uld.
Remember we saw a symbiont leave a dead Jaffa's pouch and jump into the non-John Deihl Kowalski (Jay Avacone- the Cop who says "What?" In Terminator 3). Since this symbiont is still in its larval stage, it cannot completely take over Kowalksi. While the symbiont is in control we see the nature of the Goa'Uld, they are not patient, they don't know how to be covert, they are demanding- basically they're all the same since they all share the same genetic memory.
And although they have a high understanding of scientific principles, they are all relatively stupid when it comes to social things like how people interact - they really don't know how to live in any kind of society where people have to live with each other, therefore they are always fighting and killing each other*. And they basically use the Jaffa to do it for them since they are too scared to risk their own lives, when they lose they escape and then they go into hibernation in a sarcophagus-resurrection box, and the nature of those things is explored later... But in the original movie that was how Ra was able to live forever (until he was blown into atom- sized pieces of space dust).
Since we never know who is really in control of Kowalski it adds a lot of suspense to this episode which was handled very cleverly, and... It shows us basically what would happen if anybody left their head in the Stargate while it was closing.
*The Goa'Uld named "Ba'Al" actually tried living with humans and other Goa'Uld in a more cooperative way, he wanted to be a "Benevolent god" - refer to the "Stargate: Continuum" movie. Basically his plan failed because he never figured on Betrayal from his Queen "Ketesh", She made him see the "two halves" of the situation, so to speak.
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