"Jack... They're never gonna find us."
— Col. Harry Maybourne
Maybourne claims to know the location of a hidden cache of advanced weaponry and offers to take SG-1 there in exchange for a full pardon, but once offworld he accesses a transporter to send himself to a "paradise planet", inadvertently stranding O'Neill with him. As the rest of the team try to find out what happened to them, O'Neill and Maybourne both begin to fall victim to paranoia until they turn on each other completely.
"Paradise Lost" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Anger Born of Worry: Carter becomes increasingly impatient and short-tempered with the other scientists due to her worry over O'Neill's disappearance.
- Batman Gambit: Maybourne feeds O'Neill some bullshit about a planet with a secret cache of weapons, knowing that O'Neill will go to check it out and deem the potential gain worth the risk of bringing Maybourne along.
- Blatant Lies:Maybourne: I was really broken up when I heard Simmons died, by the way.O'Neill: Yeah, we all shed a tear.
- Brick Joke: O'Neill finally gets to shoot Maybourne after threatening to do so practically every time he shows up for the last six seasons.
- The Cavalry: A Tok'ra cargo ship arrives to rescue O'Neill and Maybourne at the end.
- Continuity Nod
- Mayborne references the events of "Prometheus" and claims that Simmons intended to fly to the planet whose coordinates he gives to O'Neill.
- Jonas believes that the writing in the temple might belong to the Furlings.
- Maybourne claims that he had hoped to build a comfortable life for himself on Earth with the money he was supposed to get from selling a Goa'uld symbiote to Adrian Conrad.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Maybourne.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When Carter realizes that O'Neill and Maybourne have been sent to the planet's moon.
- Fantastic Drug: The plant that Maybourne takes to eating, which causes him to become increasingly paranoid and unstable until he's reduced to hurling grenades at O'Neill. O'Neill theorizes that it was brought through the portal by a Goa'uld for some kind of experiment.
- Friendly Enemy: Gets lampshaded by Hammond when he admits that, despite Maybourne's past transgressions, he's proven willing to assist the team on a number of occasions over the last few years.
- Friendship Moment: Teal'c comforts Carter when she breaks down over the prospect of losing O'Neill for good so soon after Daniel's departure.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: O'Neill and Maybourne both show signs of Sanity Slippage after spending enough time marooned with no-one for company but each other, though it's not clear how much of it is due to eating the plants.
- How Dare You Die on Me!: O'Neill says a variation on this when Maybourne is in bad shape after getting shot for the second time.
- Idiot Ball: The SGC contact the Tok'ra who come in a spaceship to scan the planet's surface and find no sign of O'Neill and Maybourne. Bafflingly it doesn't occur to check the nearby moon which also has a liveable biosphere on their own.
- Eating an unknown plant on an alien world is probably not the best thing to do as Maybourne and O'Neil soon learn.
- Interface Screw: As O'Neill begins to succumb to the drug in the environment, the color in the episode begins to desaturate, creating a surreal effect.
- Only a Flesh Wound: Seemingly played straight after the first time Maybourne gets shot, as he's still shown to be running around without too much trouble. Averted after the second time, however, as O'Neill seems genuinely concerned that Maybourne could actually die before the rescue arrives.
- The Pardon: Maybourne initially claims that he wants O'Neill's help in getting a presidential pardon in exchange for the location of a hidden weapons cache, though it turns out his plan all along was to flee through the portal; he just didn't count on O'Neill following him.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Maybourne claims this about the NID hiding the technology cache from the SGC — technology that could potentially protect Earth. Yeah, they were secretive and selfish bastards trying to acquire it themselves. But, if push came to shove and the planet really was in danger, then Maybourne thinks they would've come through.
- Put on a Bus: Maybourne gets shipped off to another planet so that he can "retire" in peace. Since Season Six was again supposed to be the last one before the Season 7 renewal, this obviously was meant to tie up Maybourne's storyline.
- Robinsonade: The entire plot is basically a Robinsonade IN SPACE!, with O'Neill and Maybourne stranded on a "paradise" planet (actually a moon).
- Self-Surgery: O'Neill does this after he sets off a tripwire left by Maybourne and gets piece of wood embedded in his leg.
- This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!: Said by O'Neill when Maybourne throws an explosive into a lake to "catch" some fish.
- Time Skip: The timeline of the episode jumps ahead two weeks after the first night that O'Neill and Maybourne spend on the moon.
