Fallen » GateWorld (original) (raw)

SG-1 discovers Daniel Jackson alive and living on an alien world, with no memory of who he is. The team hatches a plan to lure Anubis into a trap and destroy his new super-weapon.

RATINGS SCORECARD

OUR RATING -
FAN RATING - 7.67
NIELSEN - 1.9

EPISODE #701
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 06.13.2003
SYNDICATION AIR DATE: 09.20.2004
DVD DISC: Season 7, Disc 1

WRITTEN BY: Robert C. Cooper
DIRECTED BY: Martin Wood
GUEST STARS: Corin Nemec (Jonas Quinn), George Touliatos (Shamda), Kevan Ohtsji (Oshu), David Palffy (Anubis), Michael Adamthwaite (Herak), Gary Jones (Technician), Teryl Rothery (Dr. Janet Fraiser), Vince Crestejo (Yu), Eric Breker (Colonel Reynolds), Raahul Singh (Khordib), Johannah Newmarch (Sina), Mary-Jane Baker (SF)

WATCH NOW:

GateWorld earns a commission on purchases through affiliate links

On the planet Vis Uban, once home to the Ancients, a group of nomadic villagers walks across the field toward the forest. There is a brilliant flash of light, and a man appears, naked, lying on the ground. They approach him and ask him who he is, to which he replies, "I don't know." It is Dr. Daniel Jackson.

On Earth, Jonas Quinn continues his attempts to translate the tablet of the Ancients discovered on Abydos ("Full Circle"), which supposedly tells of the Ancients' Lost City, where they hid much of their advanced weapons and technology. Using Dr. Jackson's notes as a reference, Jonas stumbles upon a revelation, and rushes to tell General Hammond and Major Carter.

Jonas theorizes that the Ancients couldn't have actually lost a city – they only abandoned the newest city they were constructing when a plague nearly destroyed their civilization (when those who survived ascended to a higher plane of existence). Vis Uban was to be the crown jewel of their civilization. Since it was unfinished, it would probably be the last gate address on the list of those that Colonel O'Neill entered into the base computer when he had the Ancients' library downloaded into his brain ("The Fifth Race").

SG-1 gates to the planet and find the ruins of a half-built city. A nomadic group of humans have moved in, and have taken in a stranger they found. The team is astonished to see Daniel walk into the village, dressed as one of the villagers. He has been living there for two months, and has no memory of who he is (or who they are).

The team tries to remind him of his life on Earth, as a member of SG-1, but Jackson is reluctant to explore any of it. He fears that he has done something terrible, or that something terrible has happened because of him and he's not sure he will like the person he use to be. Nevertheless, he finally agrees to return to Earth with SG-1.

O'Neill shows him to a room on the base where he can stay, where they've unpacked some of his personal belongings. Daniel finds a photo of Sha're, his deceased wife, and begins to make a connection with his past. He excitedly talks of her to Teal'c, who must tell Daniel that she is dead. As he continues to explore his past and speak with his friends, some memories begin to return to him. The team theorizes that his amnesia may have been a punishment for breaking the Ancients' rules and interfering, but that Oma Desala (his ascended mentor, and always one for toeing the line) may have made it an imperfect amnesia to get around the sentence. He will regain his memories in time.

The S.G.C. combs the ruins at Vis Uban, but finds nothing in the way of advanced technology. Daniel discovers that he has retained the ability to read the Ancient language, and corrects Jonas's translation and interpretation: the Ancients hid their "Lost City" when the plague wiped out their civilization. Now, Vis Uban provides them with an opportunity to lure the powerful Goa'uld Anubis into a trap, in order to destroy the new super-weapon that Jackson handed over to him ("Full Circle").

The Tok'ra make sure that Anubis finds a fake version of the Ancients' tablet, leading him to Vis Uban. Once he arrives, O'Neill and Carter will pilot the F-302 through the ship's shields (with an instantaneous hyperspace jump, made possible by the rare element naquadria) and destroy the super-weapon's exhaust system – destroying Anubis' big advantage over the Goa'uld System Lords.

But first, Daniel and Jonas ambush a pair of Jaffa and ring up to the ship. They have been injected with a radioactive isotope developed by the Tok'ra, which will shield their life signs from the ship's sensors for exactly eight hours. The two access a computer and find the location of the exhaust vent, relaying it to O'Neill and Carter in time for the attack.

Meanwhile, Teal'c pays a visit to Lord Yu and proposes a temporary alliance in order to destroy Anubis's advantage over Yu and the rest of the System Lords. Yu will take the System Lords' fleet into battle at Vis Uban, attacking Anubis after the weapon is destroyed. Yu agrees, and Teal'c remains on board the flagship with his First Prime – who is concerned about his ailing master's physical and mental health.

The F-302 effectively engages a squadron of death gliders, destroying one of them with its new weapons system. The hyperspace jump is effective at getting them past the shields, and the target is hit. A massive explosion rocks the ship, and the super-weapon is eliminated.

The fleet, however, never arrives. Yu orders his First Prime to turn the fleet around, and Teal'c is thrown into a prison cell when he objects.

Anubis is furious, but he does have one consolation prize. His Jaffa capture Jonas, while Daniel escapes into the bowels of the ship. Jonas swears to tell him nothing, but Anubis reveals his intention to implants a device into Jonas's brain that allows him to download everything he knows.

• Daniel's locker is between two labeled for "McGuire B." and "Menard J." That's two members of Stargate's production crew, of course: art director and production designer Bridget McGuire, and director of photography Jim Menard. A character named Menard even shows up later in the season, once of the S.G.C. personnel assigned to the mining operation in "Enemy Mine."
• "They've tentatively dubbed these episodes 'Falling' [sic] and 'Homecoming.' They mostly center around the character of Daniel coming back, though that's not the central conflict or the point of the story. In that regard you could compare him to Spock in Star Trek: The Voyage Home. Daniel is somewhere and the SG-1 team has to find him, and then he has to complete the journey and get back to human form.
  "We did an episode for the fifth season called 'Ascension,' which was all about a character whom was much like what Daniel is right now. He is capable of being kicked out of the club, so to speak, so he can come back to being human. I don't know if we've established that these guys can do that. I think in the end of Season Six – the final episode 'Full Circle' – the situation arises where Daniel is given an opportunity to be booted out because of the actions he took. I don't know quite where we will start off, but I do know there's some way that the team stumbles upon Daniel, and then O'Neill must help him find the way back. Daniel also has to work to be part of the SG-1 group again." (Actor Michael Shanks, in an interview with writer Miwa Hirai)
• "[Executive producer] Robert Cooper and I have talked about what supposedly happens off-camera [between the end of 'Full Circle' and the beginning of Season Seven] and, in true Stargate tradition, Daniel is left to make a choice. Basically, it comes down to the philosophical difference of Daniel realizing that what he thought of as Utopia is actually full of dos and don'ts, and he's not actually going to accomplish much by staying on the path he's currently on. So, rather than stay and continue his spiritual journey, Daniel chooses to go back and conclude the unfinished business in the 'real' world, as it were.
  "So in the episode entitled 'Fallen,' we find that he's basically been tossed out of heaven, and we find him buck naked in the middle of some park with no memory of who he is or how he got there or what happened in his previous life. So the journey picks up from there." (Michael Shanks, in an interview with Sci-Fi Magazine)
• "By taking Jonas prisoner, Anubis is able to use his memory device on him and figure out everything Jonas knows, which turns out to kick us in the ass all season long." (Director Peter DeLuise, in Cult Times magazine)
• "What I've been told, what I've agreed to when talking to Rob Cooper, is that it can't be that Daniel comes back and everything goes back to the way it was before he left, because that would mean the show wasted a year evolving in a different direction without him. It also means the character wasted a year not evolving properly as well. I think there has to be some sort of evolution or change to Daniel when he comes back. It certainly needs to be so in order to justify why he's left the Ascended. We need to know how he feels about them, about the universe, how he feels about being back, what his future plans are now and what he wants to pursue.
  "We've both agreed that Daniel would be more intense, more restive and less satisfied. He would be less inclined to smooth things over and would stop putting his faith in the hope that things will turn out all right. He has suspicions about the Ancients now, about the ascended ones. They might not be who he thought they were, and he realizes that he has to learn to be more human than he was before. He has to be less of a thinking man and want to move forward, to take action that makes a difference. I don't mean that he should lose that introspective quality, just that he needs to be stronger, to follow through, not just to be content to sit back and wait." (Miwa Hirai interview with Michael Shanks, via Stargate SG-1 Solutions)
• "We've established that [Daniel] had to make a conscious choice. He was confronted with an almost court-like structure, and given an ultimatum: 'You either play by our rules and stay, or, if you choose not to, you're out.' And Daniel says, 'Well, you know what? I don't like the way you do things. I don't think it's the best thing for me, and I'm going back.' And when he goes back, he doesn't remember exactly what happened. But over the first five episodes – and one episode specifically, 'Orpheus' – he realizes why he came back. He recalls how helpless he felt watching his friends go through [these ordeals] and not being able to do anything about it. He understands that he's here to do something, and that the Ancients aren't angels. They're just another alien race with their own, separate agenda, and Daniel realizes that if he's going to do something for humanity and for Earth, he has to take a more proactive role." (Actor Michael Shanks, in an interview with Starlog magazine [June 2003])
• "[Daniel] really struggled with it and felt like finally, maybe he had been lied to a little bit, and that what was doing on was a bit hypocritical from the other's point of view. And so he decided to get involved, and he got his wrist slapped in a very severe kind of way ... I think fans will see a season one Daniel out of him, and the whole storyline of him being punished and having to start fresh gave him a story reason for going back to that original, slightly less tainted, wide-eyed positive Daniel.
  "And then the second half of the show kind of deals with our search for the lost city and the fact that we got led on a wild goose chase and decided maybe this is a good opportunity to sting Anubis. Lure him into a trap. And we set up a very complicated plot to try and take out Anubis. Ultimately half succeeds and half backfires, but leads Anubis ultimately to Jonas' home planet and puts them in jeopardy in the second episode, called 'Homecoming.'
  "[Jonas] started as a bit of ... I don't want to say anti-hero, but someone who was dealing with the guilt of maybe being responsible for Daniel's departure, and was branded a traitor by his own people. And he gets to go home with the people of his planet seeing that maybe he made the right choice." (Executive producer Robert C. Cooper, in Sci-Fi Magazine [August 2003])
• "Before work began on the show's seventh season, I emailed Rob Cooper a notion I had of an angel cast down from heaven, stripped of his memories and left to start a new life on Earth. Rob ended up taking the whole 'stripped' thing literally – much to the delight of Michael's fans.
  "Paul flagged an exchange at the script stage. One off-worlder notes Teal'c's presence with: 'He is Jaffa' to which O'Neill replies: 'No, but he plays one on TV.' Paul felt it broke the fourth wall but was ultimately overruled. When the episode aired, many fans loved the exchange – while many others followed suit and waved their own red flags.
  "Following the scene in which O'Neill appeals to an amnesiac Daniel, [Daniel] refers to Jack as 'Jim.' It's a gag that Brad calls back to in SGA's 'The Shrine.'" (Writer / producer Joseph Mallozzi, in a post at his blog)