We find Sam sitting outside at a cafe, waiting for...wait, who's this guy? Ambassador Joseph Faxon, her...husband? When did that happen? Several years ago it seems, as this is the year 2010. They have a discussion about having children, as their doctors, from a people called the Aschen, say they just need to keep trying.
Today happens to be the day of a celebration of SG-1's contact with the Aschen who are so advanced that they can protect Earth from the Goa'uld, do all sort of neat stuff, and have this wonder drug that cures just about anything. There are all the honors and cheering, since the Stargate is now out in the public at a terminal in Washington, and President Kinsey, who somehow got elected, makes a few remarks.
Afterwards at a reception, Sam mentions her problem to Janet, who asks if she can take a look at her, just for the hell of it. Sam agrees and the head off to Janet's now defunct clinic. The results of the examination are surprising, far from just needing to keep trying, it seems Sam's reproductive system has been completely destroyed. They're both astonished, and wonder how the Aschen, as advanced as they are, could have missed it? The obvious answer is they didn't and have been lying to them the entire time.
Sam now has a mission. The most likely way this could have happened is the Aschen drug, which means that most of the population has been sterilized by this point. The Aschen are trying to take over the Earth. There's only one person she can turn to now.
Jack, however, is not inclined to help. He knew the Aschen were Too Good to Be True, but since his warnings were ignored, he seems content to let the whole thing play out. Sam leaves and goes to find Daniel and Teal'c. They agree to help her, but they need a plan, and they need to get some stuff from the SGC, which has been reduced to a tourist trap. There, they run into Jack, who is going to help them after all, once they get the GDO they came for.
Their plan is simple, find out when a solar flare will be, and use that to send the Stargate's wormhole back in time to before they met the Aschen and prevent them from getting a hold of Earth. And that is simple for SG-1.
The problem is, solar flares are impossible to predict, with Earth's technology. The Aschen are able to track and predict them, and Sam just happens to have a working relationship with one of them. She goes into his lab, and is able to get him to run some scans on the sun to find out when one will occur. Once she knows she heads off to meet with the others.
Joe, however, catches wind of it, and confronts Sam about it. It turns out he knew about the Aschen scheme, but went along because it was better than being conquered by the Goa'uld. Sam says it's the same thing, the Aschen just take longer with theirs. He eventually relents but insists that Sam stay out of it.
At the Stargate Terminal Teal'c comes through and begins blasting the security defenses with his staff weapon. Daniel and Jack join in and they try to get a written note to the Stargate, in time for the solar flare to send it back to the time they want. As the fight goes on, all of them fall, but Sam, not able to take it anymore, runs in, grabs it and manages to get it to the 'gate right before she's cut down too.
In the year 2000, the gate opens and as everyone watches, weapons pointed at it, a piece of paper emerges. As the gate shuts off, Jack goes over to see what it is. The note is written in Jack's handwriting and his signature and stained with blood.
General Hammond decides not to take any chances, and immediately orders the address locked out of the dialing computer.
The Aschen would turn up again the very next season in "2001."
"2010" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Affably Evil: Though it's more like the Aschen are extremely stoic rather than affable, their interactions with SG-1 are never anything but completely cordial, or even accommodating. Throughout the entire episode they don't give even a single veiled threat or sinister stare.
- Alternate Timeline: Downplayed, but due to the changes to the timeline, every episode of SG-1 from this point forward (to say nothing of the TV Movies, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe) are all technically taking place in an alternate timeline.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Daniel, Carter, and Teal'c are awarded medals for their work in securing the alliance with the Aschen near the beginning of the episode.
- Bad Future: The human race is being slowly but surely eradicated by the very people that were supposed to have saved them. Also, Kinsey is President.
- Bad Samaritan: The Aschen.
- Beard of Sorrow: O'Neill is sporting one when Carter goes to visit him at his cabin, though he shaves it later in the episode.
- Big "NO!": Ambassador Faxon does this when Carter dies.
- Bloodstained Letter: The note arrives through the stargate in the present timeline covered in blood.
- The Cassandra: O'Neill mentions that he warned everybody the Aschen were bad news back when they first made contact, but nobody believed him.
- Casual Interstellar Travel: As the existence of the stargate is now public knowledge, it's been moved to the "Stargate Terminal", which basically functions like an airport terminal with people casually stepping through to other planets as though they were boarding a plane.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: O'Neill initially claims that he isn't interested in helping when Carter approaches him with her plan, but he apparently has a change of heart and shows up at the SGC when Carter and Daniel go there to gather supplies.
- Continuity Nod: Carter deliberately reproduces the same circumstances that accidentally sent the team back in time in "1969" in order to send the note back to the present timeline.
- In the previous episode, O'Neill tipped off the press that Kinsey was running for President. It was just as much a surprise to Kinsey as anyone else, although he quickly decided to roll with it.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: The energy weapons of the automated security surrounding the Stargate appears to cause only small circular burns on the target, but the sheer volume of fire quickly brings them down.
- Exact Words: When one of the security guards at the stargate terminal tries to get Teal'c to relinquish his staff.Guard: I'm sorry, but you'll have to let me have it.Teal'c: Very well. [Shoots him]
- Everyone Has Standards: O'Neill's hostile towards Carter when she first comes to his cabin. When Carter reveals she's now infertile, however, O'Neill drops the hostility (albeit for a moment) and offers genuine condolences to his former subordinate.
- Expendable Alternate Universe: Discussed when Carter first proposes her plan to alter the timeline. Fraiser points out that they would be effectively changing the lives of everybody on Earth and asks whether they have the right to do that; Carter responds that if they don't, they will see the end of human life on Earth.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: The entire team are wiped out by the automated defense system guarding the stargate in their efforts to send the note back in time.
- The Fellowship Has Ended: Since the Goa'uld were defeated some time ago, the team are no longer on active duty and have effectively disbanded. O'Neill doesn't speak to any of them at all after they refused to listen to his warnings about the Aschen, and though the others appear to be friendly with each other it's implied that they don't exactly see each other regularly either.
- I Warned You: O'Neill says as much to Carter when she tells him what the Aschen are planning.
- It's All About Me: When giving a speech at the ten-year-anniversary of the Earth/Aschen alliance that defeated the Goa'uld and guaranteed him the presidency, President Kinsey thanks Sam, Daniel, and Teal'c for what they did for him, and the country, in that order.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: It's implied that this is what happened to Hammond sometime after the Aschen alliance was formalized; Frasier claims that he called her claiming to have important information that he couldn't discuss over the phone, only to die of an apparent heart attack the next day despite having been in perfect health.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Carter mentions that she and Faxon had been trying to conceive for three years before it's revealed that she's infertile. This is a justified use of the trope, however, due to the Aschen vaccine sterilizing the entire planet while Sam's Aschen doctor claimed that nothing was wrong.
- Long Game: The Aschen plot, which involves forming an alliance with Earth, secretly sterilizing everybody, and then waiting two hundred years for the remaining humans to die of natural causes.
- Malicious Misnaming: O'Neill calls Molem "Melon".
- Metal Detector Checkpoint: Daniel triggers one at the stargate terminal when he smuggles a zat in his briefcase, though this was part of the plan and he just shoots the guard.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Said by Carter when she realizes that the team inadvertently doomed the Earth by making contact with the Aschen. Faxon also gets a moment of this later on when he realizes the birth rate decrease is a much higher percentage than it's supposed to be and the Aschen are actively killing the humans off.
- Oh, Wait!: When Carter warns O'Neill about the Aschen:O'Neill: Gosh, I wish I'd seen that coming. Oh wait — I did see that coming.
- Ominous Message from the Future: The note that the team manages to send back to the present day.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Carter and Daniel join a tour of the SGC, "disguising" themselves in sunglasses and, in Daniel's case, a fedora. And then Daniel draws attention to them by correcting the tour guide.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Upon receiving a bloodstained warning through the stargate written in O'Neill's handwriting (which he claims not to have written), General Hammond doesn't dither about; he immediately orders the address on the note to be locked out.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The whole point of the episode.
- Shout-Out: To 2010: The Year We Make Contact. The title of the episode, and the plan to transform Jupiter into a star.
- Slow-Motion Fall: The entire team does this as they get gunned down one-by-one in their run for the stargate.
- Stealing the Credit: Implied to be the case when Kinsey says in his address that he forged the alliance with Aschen, though the team seem more amused then anything else.
- Sterility Plague: The modus operandi of the Aschen. It's stated that the birth rate for entire planet has decreased by ninety-one percent.
- Title by Year: The episode is set in the year 2010, ten years ahead of the show's "present day" timeline at the time that it was aired, as well as referencing 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
- Too Good to Be True: O'Neill's opinion of the Aschen. He was right.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The episode is set in the year 2010, ten years ahead of the show's "present day" timeline at the time that it was aired.
- 21-Gun Salute: Happens as a part of the ceremony commemorating the Earth-Aschen alliance at the beginning of the episode.
- The Unmasqued World: The stargate is now public knowledge, with people casually using alien tech and travelling to other planets as an everyday occurrence.
- We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Thanks to the Aschen, cancer and several other human ailments have been cured, and there's even an anti-aging vaccine that doubles the human lifespan. Frasier actually laments this, as it's effectively rendered her obsolete.
- Wham Episode: Again, downplayed, but every episode of SG-1 (and the remainder of the Brad Wright-era of the franchise) from this point forward are technically taking place in an alternate timeline.
