Recap / Stargate SG-1 S10 E6 "200"

"200, you say?"

— Maj. Gen. Jack O'Neill

Martin Lloyd is back, but this time, he’s pitching the script to a “Wormhole X-treme” movie. SG-1 is asked to proof it, until such time as they can go on their next mission through the gate. When that time comes, the gate promptly malfunctions, to everyone’s confusion and annoyance.

Played for Laughs.

Marks the 200th episode.

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"200" provides examples of the following tropes:

• Actor Allusion: Vala pitches a show idea based off Farscape, where Claudia Black and Ben Browder had acted previously.
• An Aesop: Teal'c's Expy, who heretofore has not had a single spoken line, ends the episode on one.
  "Science fiction is an existential metaphor that allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said invokedindividual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all."
• Affectionate Parody: Mostly of the show itself, but parodies of Star Trek, Farscape and sci-fi tropes in general also crop up.
• Anti-Climax: Jack O'Neill's Bus Coming Back was deliberately set up as such, having him come in all of a sudden while Martin talks about stroking the actors' egos in order to get them to do his movie.
• Badass Bookworm: Daniel is introduced as one in the puppets sequence.
  Puppet!Hammond: Next we need a bookworm adventurer who can say "brains" and "guts" in twenty-seven languages.
• Beehive Hairdo: Uhura Carter is sporting the best one her Boyish Short Hair can manage.
• Better than a Bare Bulb
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma:
  Mitchell: You gotta open big, catch people's attention. Make 'em think the whole thing is gonna be jam-packed.
  Vala: I love jam! (everyone looks at her) ...Oh, I get it. It's yet another playful twist on words in your Earth language.
  • Later:
    Vala: Well, it certainly seems to be packed full of jam!
• Breather Episode: A very silly, self-referential meta-humor episode right in the middle of the show's darkest storyline.
• Butt-Monkey: Siler is electrocuted and thrown across the room in one of the fantasy segments and complains, "Why do these things always happen to me?" He's also turned into a zombie in Mitchell's pitch.
• Call-Back:
  • Vala complains about the lack of a "sexy female alien" in Martin's script; in "Wormhole X-Treme!", one of Martin's producers told him that the addition of a sexy female alien would improve the titular Show Within a Show — which becomes a Hilarious in Hindsight bit of Lampshade Hanging with Vala being added to the main cast. At the time that "Wormhole X-Treme!" was made, by the way, the "sexy female alien" line was intended as a reference to the "Anise" character played by Vanessa Angel in a few episodes.
  • Landry makes a comment about it saying "General" on his uniform, referencing both O'Neill's line in "The First Commandment" and Colonel Danning's catchphrase in "Wormhole X-Treme!".
  • O'Neill's "200, you say?" in response to being told of Mitchell's 200th trip through the gate is the same as his comment about the collective 1000th trip in "Heroes, Part 1".
• Celebrity Paradox: It's implied that Farscape exists in the Stargate universe, but no one ever mentions that Vala and Mitchell look exactly like Aeryn and John.
• Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Twice lampshaded:
  • Near the beginning of the episode, while discussing Mitchell's 200th trip through the gate, the team arrive in the gate room magically dressed in their field gear, despite not setting foot in the locker room. Teal'c promptly picks up the conversation thread with, "I have been reflecting while changing into our gear..."
  • At the end of the episode, when Walter is invited to join the team on their mission, he leaves the control room in his normal clothes and emerges in the gate room seconds later dressed in full gear to match the rest of the team.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  Mitchell: Even if the valley wasn't filled with Jaffa, we could never have made it to the gate and dialed out in under... ten seconds.
  Martin: Good. See, that's why we're here. So what do you think, thirty seconds? Maybe not such a round number... How about thirty-eight?
• Commuting on a Bus: O'Neill drops by for the first time since the beginning of season nine.
• Composite Character: In-Universe, the Mitchell analogue in the "younger, edgier SG-1" Imagine Spot is named Mitchell but seems to be romantically interested in Samantha Carter like O'Neill.
• Continuity Nod:
  • During Mitchell's zombie movie pitch, he reveals that the zombies were caused by the Telchak device.
  • Carter and Daniel discuss the events of "1969" while trying to convince Mitchell that O'Neill is his father.
  • Vala expresses disbelief that anyone would buy the idea of body-swapping. Based on Daniel's reaction, he's well aware of the irony.
  • The puppets skit remixes events from the movie and the pilot episode.
  • O'Neill comments that having the heroes go fishing would be the perfect ending for the movie, and the end scene of "Threads"/"Moebius", where the team do exactly that, is revisited.
• Daydream Surprise: A scene seemingly set in the "real" world ends up spiraling out of control until the SGC inexplicably blows up, and we cut back to the briefing room to reveal that it was actually Martin describing yet another scene from his movie.
• Deadpan Snarker: Just about everybody gets their snark on in reaction to Martin's increasingly ridiculous pitches.
• Death Glare: Teal'c uses it to intimidate Martin Lloyd to pitch a detective show starring him.
• Deus ex Machina: Parodied when Martin states that he's planning to have the Asgard beam the team out of danger — something that's happened in the show proper on numerous occasions — just before the mountain explodes.
  Mitchell: Hang on. We're alive in the next scene.
  Martin: Oh, I just haven't fixed that part yet. I'm thinking I can back-sell it and say you were beamed out at the last second.
  Daniel: Beamed out?
  Martin: Sure, why not?
  Teal'c: Is that not too convenient?
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The wedding scene has the stock wedding music drift into an organ rendition of the show's theme.
• Eaten Alive: Poor Walter's fate in Mitchell's zombie pitch.
• Fake Action Prologue: During the Previously on…, SG-1 meets the Furlings, then let the Goa'uld blow up their planet.
  Carter: Well, that never happened!
• Fedora of Asskicking: Teal'c wears one in his private investigator pitch.
• First-Name Basis: Lampshaded and parodied in the wedding sketch, where O'Neill and Carter are still unable to use each other's first names on their wedding day.
• Guns Akimbo: Mitchell does this in his zombie pitch; justified since it's his fantasy and he probably isn't going for realism.
• Hand Signals: Mocked in the "invisible O'Neill" skit, where O'Neill snarks at the team for ignoring his signals despite the fact that he's currently invisible.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Mitchell's pitch, where he imagines himself as an unstoppable Action Hero and humanity's last hope against the zombie hordes (while the rest of the team are inexplicably absent) is made of this. Teal'c's private investigator pitch and Vala's Wizard of Oz pitch are milder examples.
• Holding the Floor: From the aside conversation between Landry and Walter before Mitchell finally gets to make his 200th trip through the gate, it's clear that the unexplained "gate malfunction" was a ruse to buy time for other SG teams to set up a surprise party.
• Human Aliens: Lampshaded when puppet!Carter tells puppet!O'Neill that the odds of any alien lifeforms they find on the other side of the gate being remotely human-like are "astronomical".
• Hurricane of Puns: Teal'c has some fun with this in the "invisible O'Neill" sketch:
  Teal'c: You are most transparent, O'Neill.
  O'Neill: Oh, I get it. Good one!
  Teal'c: I can see right through you.
  O'Neill: Don't push it.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  Martin: You're an alien, right?
  Vala: Exactly. And I know just what this movie needs.
  Martin: So how would you know what sci-fi fans from Earth would be interested in?
  Vala: Aren't you also an alien?
  Martin: (defensive) Yeah, but I've been here quite a while.
  • Also, when Martin suggests that he could use face switching or body swapping to solve the lack of a lead character, Vala laughs it off, saying, "As if anyone would believe that." Cue Daniel glaring at her accusingly.
  • The reference Martin makes about not picking a round number, and instead choosing thirty-eight, references the fact that under ordinary conditions, the Gate will automatically shut down after 38 minutes of activation.
• Imagine Spot: Used rather liberally, with various members of the team drifting into bizarre fantasy sequences every time someone pitches another idea for the movie.
• Inadvertent Entrance Cue:
  Martin: I'm talking about a twist. Something nobody's expecting.
  O'Neill: (entering) You mean something like this?
• Invisible Jerkass: The original members of the team talk about a previously-unseen incident where O'Neill was apparently rendered invisible for a brief period of time and indulged in such pranks as leaving the room so Carter was left talking to an empty chair, driving up to the base entrance and putting his dog behind the wheel to freak out the guard, falling asleep and snoring in a room where Daniel is giving a lecture, and spying on Carter in the shower.
  Carter: Oh, don't tell me...
  Daniel: Oh, yes. He likes being invisible.
• Jumping the Shark: Martin considers Mitchell's idea of shooting the entire movie with puppets when the actors start demanding more money to be this in-universe.
  Martin: Maybe we can have puppet O'Neill jump over a puppet shark on a one-third scale motorcycle!
  Vala: ...I don't get it.
• Justified Title: The title is obviously a reference to the fact that it's the show's 200th episode, but the in-universe justification is that the team are commemorating Mitchell's 200th trip through the stargate.
• Lampshade Hanging: On pretty much everything, including the act of lampshade hanging itself.
  Teal'c: Is that not too convenient?
  Martin: Not if you hang a lantern on it.
  Daniel: What's that?
  Martin: It's your writer's term. Another character points out how convenient it is. Dr. Levant can say "Wow, that was great timing!" That way, the audience knows I intended for it to be convenient, and we move on.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Nearly the whole episode.
  • Mitchell suggests a strong opening sequence, to which Martin shrugs off by saying, “No one does that anymore. They just throw up the titles and get on with it.” The title sequence for the show pops up immediately after.
  • Mitchell, Carter, and Vala each (apparently unknowingly) referenced recent events for each character:
    • Mitchell was brought in as a replacement of O'Neill as leader of SG-1.
    • Carter was brought in "on the phone" (by video-conferencing) in early season 9.
    • Vala is upset that there's no "sexy female alien," and mentions in the Wizard of Oz sketch that she would like to be a "regular part of something;" Claudia Black became a full-time cast member in season 10.
  • Martin's complaint about terrible cell reception in the SGC is a reference to a scene in "Threads," where Carter also uses her cell phone in the briefing room, 27 stories underground.
  • At the end of Act 2, the SGC is seen to explode. After the commercial break, Act 3 begins with Martin declaring, "And that is the end of Act 2!"
  • Near the end of Act 3, Martin gets a text saying that their budget gets cut, and it ruins Act 3 of his movie. When asked what happens, Martin replies, “With these cuts, not much. Act three just ends.” Which the show promptly does, going immediately to the commercials.
  • The ending scene with the Wormhole X-Treme! cast:
    • Colonel Danning was said to have been on the show for eight years, though many fans thought he phoned it in his last year.
    • Dr. Levant's actor left for a season to pursue other projects, and came back after a fan campaign which included a Web site and an ad in a trade magazine.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Mercilessly mocked when Daniel and Carter try to persuade Mitchell that O'Neill is his real father thanks to the magic of time travel. It's just convincing enough that they almost have you going for a moment or two...
  Vala: Wait, are you saying that Jack O'Neill is...?
  Mitchell: My daddy?
  Daniel: All starting to make sense now, isn't it?
  (long pause)
  Mitchell: ...Oh, I'm being punk'd, aren't I?!
• Made of Explodium: Lampshaded:
  Teal'c: I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode.
  Martin: Look, you guys may all know how things really work out there in the galaxy, but I know the film business. Explosions make great trailers. Simple fact. More explosions, better trailer. Better trailer, more viewers.
• Medium Awareness: The puppet sketch ends with Puppet Jack, Sam, and Daniel going through the Stargate... which deactivates, cutting their puppet strings and leaving them in an immobile heap on the other side. Puppet Hammond and Puppet Walter kick themselves for not having seen that coming.
• Medium Blending: A whole scene is shot using puppet versions of season one of SG-1 after Mitchell suggests this as an alternative when Martin's actors drop out.
• Mistaken for Gay: Discussed during the wedding scene, which opens with O'Neill and Daniel standing at the altar; Daniel remarks that if Carter doesn't show up soon, people are going to think they're the ones getting married.
• Mood Whiplash: When it was originally aired, this very special and hilarious 200th episode was immediately followed by a very dramatic and serious episode of Stargate Atlantis.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The reactions of puppet!Hammond and puppet!Walter when the puppet team go through the gate and their cut strings are left hanging from the ceiling.
  Puppet!Hammond: Dear God in Heaven.
  Puppet!Walter: I feel so stupid.
• Nepotism: Daniel and Carter suggest this is the only reason for Mitchell's career success while they're winding him up about O'Neill being his real father.
  Daniel: Come on, you have to have known that Jack's always taken an interest in your life.
  Mitchell: Jack? O'Neill?
  Teal'c: Indeed.
  Carter: You remember when you were chosen for the 302 program even though you didn't think you should get in? How about when you were chosen for SG-1?
• Newhart Phone Call: The show's habit of showing various characters in a one-sided phone conversation with O'Neill since his departure is mocked when Carter suggests this as a solution after Martin's lead actor drops out of the film.
  Martin: How can I have the main character in the story without actually having the actor who plays him?
  Carter: Well, you could have the other characters refer to him all the time. Maybe get him on the phone once in a while.
  Martin: Oh, yeah, right. I mean something cool, like face-switching or body-swapping.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The team's tendency to do this is lampshaded when the opening of the film has them finally finding the planet of the Furlings only to immediately get it destroyed.
  Carter: It makes the characters look stupid. I mean, do you really think the best way to introduce the heroes of the story is to show them causing a massive catastrophe?
  Mitchell: That's... realistic.
• Noodle Incident: The "invisible O'Neill" incident and mission file 30185.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Parodied with one of Martin's pitches, which has the team at the edge of a steep cliff being chased by replicators, with the stargate in a valley below them filled with Jaffa and Goa'uld bombers. Carter yells that they have ten seconds before the time dilation field is activated and they're stuck there forever; cut to the team arriving safely back on Earth with no explanation as to how they made it.
  Mitchell: That was close, huh?
  Daniel: Oh, yeah.
  The real Daniel: (voiceover) Are you serious?!
• Painting the Medium: Why puppets can't go through wormholes - the horizon cuts their lifelines!
• Pardon My Klingon: Spoofed and turned up to eleven in the Farscape parody, in which the dialogue consists of practically nothing but made up alien curse words.
• Phlebotinum Breakdown: The stargate mysteriously stops working as the team are about to embark for Mitchell's 200th trip, conveniently providing the set-up for them to remain at the SGC and help Martin with his script.
• Plausible Deniability: Once again, it's stated that this is the reason why the Air Force is so keen for Martin to go ahead with his film, since its existence instantly discredits anyone trying to go public about the real stargate program.
• Real Award, Fictional Character: Toward the end, Martin tells the interviewers that “Wormhole X-treme” had received seven Saturn Awards. Played with as the awards are real, but the award Martin says they were nominated for (and won seven times) was "best cable or syndicated science fiction show". However, at the time, the category was only "best cable/syndicated television show".
• Remember the New Guy?: Parodied when a flashback shows the ending of "Threads" and "Moebius" with the original team settling down to do some fishing at O'Neill's cabin before cutting to Mitchell and Vala sat on the opposite side of the pond.
  Mitchell: Yep, it's good to be here.
  (Cut back to the briefing room)
  O'Neill: You weren't there!
• Reverse Polarity: Used in the Star Trek spoof. It's also actually been used on the show itself as well.
• Running Gag: Several gags that have been used over the course of the show get a nod here. Some of the most notable:
  • The fact that no one knows who or what the hell Furlings are supposed to be.
  • The long tradition of The Wizard of Oz references.
  • Mitchell having read all the mission files.
  • Self-deprecating jabs at Carter's infamous "reproductive organs" speech from the original pilot.
  • Daniel's in-universe Never Live It Down regarding his pyramids-as-alien-landing-pads theories.
  • O'Neill's obsession with fishing, and the fact that there may or may not actually be fish in his pond.
• Sand In My Eyes: Walter is shown crying during the wedding scene, before the wedding has even begun.
  Walter: It's just, uh, a summer cold, sir.
• Sci-Fi Name Buzzwords: Vala sprinkles these liberally throughout her pitch in an attempt to disguise the fact that it's a blatant rip-off of The Wizard of Oz, turning the Wicked Witch into a "local Goa'uld", Glinda the Good Witch into a "lovely fair-haired Tok'ra" and the eponymous wizard into a "powerful ascended being".
• Servile Snarker: Carter gets one more chance to do this towards her superior officer, O'Neill:
  O'Neill: What, a guy can't just stop by from Malibu to say hi?
  Carter: Malibu?
  O'Neill: Sure. I was there on ... business.
  Carter: Exactly, sir. You're an Air Force general with enormous responsibilities.
• Sequel Episode: To "Wormhole X-Treme!".
• Series Continuity Error: During the "invisible O'Neill" sketch, Hammond is said to be still at the SGC and O'Neill still works in the field (putting it no later than season seven), but Teal'c has hair (putting it no earlier than season eight).
• Serious Business: "Douglas Anders," who plays Teal'c's Expy Grell on Wormhole X-Treme!, has this attitude towards science fiction.
  Anders: Science fiction is an existential metaphor. It allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said: "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."
• Ship Tease: In keeping with self-referential tone of the episode, Sam/Jack, Daniel/Vala and even Jack/Daniel are all given a nod.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Furlings look suspiciously like Ewoks.
  • Prior to Martin's arrival, Daniel questions why anyone would make a movie of a show that only had three episodes; Teal'c replies that it "performed quite well on DVD", as a nod to Firefly.
  • Vala's first pitch is a rip-off of The Wizard of Oz, starring herself as Dorothy, Carter as Glinda the Good Witch, Landry as the wizard and Mitchell, Daniel and Teal'c as the scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man, respectively.
  • Her second pitch is Farscape (after Martin tells her to pick something more obscure if she's going to plagiarize), with herself as Aeryn, Daniel as Crichton, Carter as Chiana, Teal'c as D'Argo, Mitchell as Stark and Thor as Rygel. She also starts to suggest a pitch based on Gilligan's Island, but Martin cuts her off before she can get into it fully.
    • Also Ben Browder playing Stark instead of John Crichton is a Shout-Out to the Farscape episode "Unrealized Reality" in which the actors all play each others characters.
  • Scene 24 is a Star Trek parody, starring Mitchell as Captain Kirk, Carter as Uhura, Daniel as either McCoy or Spock and Teal'c as Worf.
  • The puppet version of SG-1 is done in Supermarionation. They actually recruited the puppeteers from Team America: World Police to help.
• Show Within a Show: Wormhole X-Treme!
• Spectacular Spinning:
  Puppet!Hammond: Sergeant, make it spin!
  Puppet!Walter: Spin? ...Sir, it doesn't spin.
  Puppet!Hammond: What? It has to spin, it's round! Spinning is so much cooler than not spinning. I'm the General, I want it to spin! Now!
• Story-Breaker Power: Martin states that he's wary about making his main character invisible in case it makes him too powerful.
• Super Cell Reception: Lampshaded when Martin takes a call inside the briefing room and comments on how terrible the reception is; keeping in mind the fact that they're 28 floors underground inside a mountain, he's lucky to get any reception at all.
  • Likewise Lampshaded in the Younger and Hipper pitch where the Teal'c replacement aboard an alien ship above a planet calls the Daniel replacement on the ground on their cell phones.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The episode has some fun leaning on the fourth wall regarding Mitchell's replacement of O'Neill, with everyone giving him blank looks when he suggests that Martin simply replace his main character with a new guy after the original actor drops out. Martin also repeatedly insists that Colonel Danning is based on O'Neill, not Mitchell, much to Mitchell's annoyance.
• Take That!:
  • To the central gimmick of 24.
  Daniel: What difference does it make? It's not like you're gonna have an actual ticking clock on the screen.
  Martin: That's brilliant!
  Daniel: That's ridiculous.
  • To Team America: World Police. Martin scoffs at the idea of an entire movie made using puppets.
• Techno Babble: Martin asks Carter to repeat one of her spiels about why the gate isn't working so he can use it in his script.
  Carter: Power's getting through to the capacitors, but for some reason the charge isn't holding. That's causing the control crystal to send feedback into the interface and reset the programming code of the base computer's dialing protocol.
  Martin: Whoa! That was awesome! Say that again.
  Carter: ...No!
  Martin: Oh. Uh, everybody take five, I gotta get that down before I forget it. (to himself) The power getting the flux capacitor but the feedback is not feeding back into the feedback phase... This is gold!
• That Came Out Wrong: One more trip through the old orifice.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Lampshaded with O'Neill's sudden appearance; Vala predicts that audiences will never see it coming, but born-and-bred Earthlings Daniel and Carter are a little more Genre Savvy:
  Daniel: No, there'll be spoilers.
  Carter: Are you kidding? It'll be in the commercial.
  • And yes, his cameo was given away in the actual trailers for the episode.
• Troll: Daniel and Carter tormenting Mitchell about "mission file 30185" for their own amusement.
• Troubled Production: Martin's movie is this in-universe. First he gets in disagreements with the executives, refusing to reuse shots from the show and threatening to take the production elsewhere. He then regrets not giving SG-1 his first draft, saying the producers brought in the other writers (and insisting he's the real producer). Later, he learns that lead actor Nick Marlowe backed out of the movie over a money dispute, leaving him at a loss with what to do with his character Colonel Danning. Later on, he learns that without Marlowe, a "junior executive" at the network is suggesting for the movie to be recast as a Younger and Hipper team. Then the foreign distributor goes bankrupt, the resulting budget cut leaving the third act with No Ending. Then the entire cast goes on strike with Marlowe, so Martin decides to make them think that he rewrote the script just for them. Then the focus groups rejected the ending. Finally, the studio calls him telling the movie is cancelled...because they decided to renew the series instead!
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Lampshaded by Carter after a particularly egregious example in the Star Trek skit.
  Carter: "The singularity is about to explode"?
  Martin: (pleased) Yes.
  Carter: Everything about that statement is wrong!
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Mitchell provides the page quote:
  Daniel: How exactly is having weapons at maximum going to help the situation?
  Martin: The audience isn't going to know the difference, they love "weapons at maximum".
  Mitchell: Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment.
• Wasn't That Fun?: Daniel mocks Mitchell's tendency for this kind of thing in response to his genuine enthusiasm over Martin's visit at the beginning of the episode.
  Mitchell: Come on, it'll be fun.
  Daniel: You say that about everything. Why am I doing this?
  • After Landry "rescues" them from Martin:
  Mitchell: I owe you one, sir.
  Landry: Another one.
  Daniel: What are you talking about? I thought you said it was gonna be "fun".
• Wedding Finale: Invoked — Vala suggests this as a possible ending for Martin's movie, leading into an Imagine Spot of an O'Neill/Carter wedding with Daniel and Vala playing best man and maid of honor, Thor as the ringbearer and Mitchell and Teal'c getting impatient in the front row.
• Younger and Hipper: The concept gets parodied after Martin states that one of his producers is advising him to recast with "younger, edgier versions of the team"; cut to a teen SG-1 that features Teal'c making out with a sexy female Goa'uld, Carter and Mitchell making out just because, Daniel Wangsting that Mitchell doesn't like him anymore and Vala randomly announcing that she's pregnant, all set to a rock soundtrack with Totally Radical dialogue and cell phones that work in space. This whole Imagine Spot gets a "No. Just… No" Reaction from the persons concerned.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Mitchell's story pitch, which gets shot down by Martin because it's been "done to death".