"I hope we brought a lot of tape."
— Julia Donovan
After Carter is approached by journalist Julia Donovan regarding a secret government project named Prometheus, the team is ordered to give her a tour of the project — actually Earth's first ship capable of interstellar travel — in the hopes of containing the leak. However, rogue NID agents posing as camera crew soon hijack the ship to demand the release of Colonel Simmons and Adrian Conrad.
"Prometheus" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Air-Vent Passageway: Carter crawls through one of these on board the Prometheus after escaping from the storage room where she was being held.
- Artistic License – Politics: The episode's inciting incident is Julia Donovan trying to interview Carter about the Prometheus (which she thinks is a fusion power project). The President shuts that down with a phone call, and the reporter's editor tells her flat-out that "when the President kills a story, that's the end". As described, this is a very basic violation of the reporter's First Amendment rights: the President has no constitutional power to simply order a press agency not to publish a story. Likely what actually happened is that the President exercised soft power, i.e. they pulled strings with the network.
- Asshole Victim: No-one is particularly sorry to see Adrian Conrad or Col. Simmons go.
- Big Damn Heroes: Somewhat subverted at the end; Thor shows up as the heroes are stranded in deep space on a half-finished ship, but he's not there to save them, he's there to ask for their help in dealing with the replicators once again.
- Body Surf: The Goa'uld possessing Adrian Conrad jumps into Simmons after the original host is killed.
- Continuity Nod:
- O'Neill and Teal'c use the Death Glider from Anubis's mothership to catch up to the Prometheus after it takes off.
- One of the hijackers mentions that she was formerly part of Maybourne's offworld operation.
- Thor thanks the team for saving him from Anubis.
- Continuous Decompression: Happens when O'Neill opens the doors to blow Simmons out of the ship; he and Teal'c are both able to hold on until the doors are closed again.
- Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: O'Neill and Teal'c show up to take out three of the hijackers just as they're about to kill Carter.
- Cool Starship: The Prometheus.
- Dead Man's Switch: Donovan claims that if "anything were to happen to her", she has plans in place for her story to be released immediately.
- "Die Hard" on an X: Die Hard on a partially completed spaceship, with Carter playing the John McClane role.
- Elaborate Underground Base: The Prometheus is housed in a secret facility several hundred feet beneath the Nevada desert.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Julia Donovan mistakenly thinks the "Prometheus" project is an experimental fusion reactor. It's actually Earth's first-ever space battleship.
- The Grays: Discussed; when Donovan's producer asks if "little green men" helped to build the ship, Carter responds with "actually, they're grey"—obviously meaning the Asgard—and then proceeds to spin some bullshit about it being reverse-engineered from an alien ship that crashed outside of Fairbanks, Alaska in 1978.Jonas: Fairbanks?
Carter: It sounded better than "Roswell". - The Guards Must Be Crazy: Somehow, the camera crew (actually N.I.D. operatives) managed to get guns and zats hidden in the camera bags past the likely multiple layers of security that they had to get through. O'Neill is rightly infuriated when he gets to the site and chews out Major Davis demanding to know how such a thing could have happened. He says they passed background checks, but apparently no one thought to inspect their equipment or otherwise search them.
- Here We Go Again!: SG-1's reaction at the end of the episode when Thor, once again, asks them to help the Asgard fight the replicators.
- Hostage Situation: Donovan's crew — actually rogue NID agents — quickly take over the ship, locking Carter in a storage room while holding Jonas and Donovan hostage to demand the release of Simmons and Conrad from prison. If their demands aren't met, they threaten to let the ship's engines overload, resulting in a blast that could potentially take out the entire state of Nevada.
- Intrepid Reporter: Julia Donovan.
- Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: While evading capture, Major Carter hides in a storage room and closes the door behind her. Her pursuers decide to lock down the room completely to simply keep her out of the way...except the room contains communications equipment, which she quickly rigs to contact the surface, and a plasma torch, which she uses to free herself.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Earth gets her first starship, marking the beginning of a shift in the series' tone from the heroes being constantly outmatched and on the defensive to becoming a powerful force in their own right.
- Oh, Crap!: Carter gets one when she realizes that they're taking off while she's still in a part of the ship that has an incomplete airlock.
- Only in It for the Money: Donovan's producer, who claims that the rogue NID offered him a lot of money to get them inside the ship. It ultimately gets him killed when he draws the line at violence.
- Roswell That Ends Well: Defied by Carter, who claims to Donovan that the Prometheus is based on an alien ship that crashed in Fairbanks, Alaska.Jonas: (sotto voce) Fairbanks?
Carter: It sounded better than "Roswell". - Shut Up, Hannibal!: This exchange between Simmons and Conrad:Simmons: Are we going to get into hyperdrive anytime soon here?Conrad: I'm working on it, but the design is incredibly crude. It amazes me that a race as backward as yours could even think of attempting interstellar travel.Simmons: Spare me the supervillain riff. We're on the clock here.
- Standard Human Spaceship: Prometheus fits this trope to a tee.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Between Simmons and Conrad. It doesn't take long for them to turn on each other once the ship is in orbit.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: The eventual fate of Simmons.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: O'Neill, Teal'c and Major Davis mostly look kind of bored at the sight of the Prometheus taking off in front of them.
- Unwitting Pawn: Julia was used by the rogue NID to get them onto Prometheus, leaking just enough info for her and her producer to bargain their way onto the ship.
