The Light » GateWorld (original) (raw)

Major Samantha Carter prepares to join Dr. Daniel Jackson on an offworld project on P4X-347, where Jackson and the members of SG-5 have discovered a Goa'uld palace deserted hundreds of years ago. The center of attention in the building – probably once used as a sort of opium den-like pleasure palace – is a pedestal that generates a huge, glowing, cascading light show.

Carter prepares to disembark the S.G.C. with Lieutenant Barber of SG-5. Barber seems distracted, staring at the dialing Stargate. When it engages, he suddenly rushes into the unstable vortex and is disintegrated. Carter and Colonel O'Neill are stunned.

Daniel and SG-5 are recalled from the planet, and are shocked at the news of Barber's suicide. He showed no signs of depression – quite the opposite, in fact. But Daniel himself is more concerned with a magnificent holographic light displayed on the walls of a room on the planet, and with a small device he brought back but cannot get to work.

Growing more frustrated as the day wears on, Jackson decides he has to return to the planet to work with the device. O'Neill tells him that they will return the next morning, but that's not soon enough for Daniel. He rushes to General Hammond's office and demands to go now. But the General refuses.

The next morning, Daniel fails to report in. O'Neill finds him outside his apartment, moments away from jumping off his balcony to his death on the street far below. He is depressed and a little out of it, but O'Neill finally pulls him back from the edge.

In the S.G.C. infirmary, Dr. Janet Fraiser reports that Jackson's neural activity is significantly diminished. There are no signs of a contagion, and no traces of foreign substances in his body – though Jackson's symptoms look like drug withdrawal. And the members of SG-5 are showing the same symptoms.

O'Neill, Carter and Teal'c visit the planet where Daniel and SG-5 were working, and discover the magnificent light of which had Daniel spoken. It is beautiful, and the three find themselves momentarily hypnotized by it. But Carter detects no other forms of radiation being emitted.

The team soon discovers that a young boy is living in the abandoned Goa'uld palace. The boy, Loran, claims that his parents are gone but will return soon. They were explorers, and brought him here. SG-1 retrieves various environmental samples (including a blood sample from Loran), and O'Neill delivers them to Earth.

It isn't long, though, before Jack himself begins to show symptoms of neural failure. He learns that the members SG-5 are all dead, and that Daniel is growing worse. And in the hours since he left the planet, Hammond has not been able to make contact with Carter and Teal'c.

When Daniel's neural activity begins to fail, signaling that his death is near, Fraiser has no option but to send him back to the planet. Hopefully, it won't be too late for him to still be saved by whatever it is that he's addicted to. As Daniel's heart stops beating, Jack picks him up and rushes through the Stargate. On the other side, Jackson slowly begins to recover.

Carter and Teal'c stand hypnotized in the light room, and Jack is betting that the light itself is the cause of their problems – and the death of all of SG-5. Jack, Sam and Teal'c attempt to shut down the device, but again become transfixed by its beauty. When Daniel recovers, he learns that the small device he'd recovered from the temple is a remote control for the platform that generates the light. He turns it off.

With a few hours to take advantage of before the withdrawal symptoms begin to affect them, Teal'c, O'Neill and Carter leave the palace to explore the surrounding countryside. They find themselves on a beach, and a short ways down the shore find the skeletal remains of two humans – surely, Loran's parents.

The symptoms overtake them quickly, and the three return to the palace. They are weakened, but begin to feel better almost immediately upon their arrival.

Jackson, who stayed behind with Loran, has been fine the whole time. Something in the palace itself is causing the addiction – something other than the light. When the team finds that the platform emits radiation without the light being on (the light itself does not cause the altered brain chemistry, but simply takes advantage of the change), O'Neill confronts Loran.

The boy does, in fact, know how to turn it off. He opens the control panel and runs away,after learning that Jack had found the bodies of his parents.

O'Neill goes to talk with Loran, who confesses to killing his parents. They were addicted to the light. They went days without eating, and did nothing but stare at the light – though Loran himself was too young to be affected. Loran turned off the device, and his parents went crazy and drowned themselves in the ocean outside the palace. Loran found their bodies washed up on the shore the next morning, and buried them there.

O'Neill tells him that it wasn't his fault. The two return to the light room, where Sam, Daniel and Teal'c have discovered that the device can be turned off incrementally. They need only remain there two or three weeks in order to properly rid themselves of the addiction.

They tell Loran that, when they leave, he can come with them.