"Daniel could be carrying the minds of as many as a dozen of the ship's passengers."
— Dr. Janet Fraiser
The team discover a crashed alien ship called the Stromos, whose passengers appear to be in a form of stasis; while investigating, they are knocked out by a strange white light. When they awaken, they find that the consciousnesses of several of the ship's passengers have somehow been transferred into Daniel's body.
"Lifeboat" provides examples of the following tropes:
- The Ark: The Stromos was intended to be one of these, carrying its people to a new homeworld after their planet was destroyed.
- Call-Back: When Daniel is first brought back to the SGC, Hammond asks if there's any chance he could have become mentally unstable.
- Captain Obvious: Upon seeing Martice-in-Daniel hamming it up and ranting at Fraiser and her aides:Teal'c: That is not Daniel Jackson.
- Closest Thing We Got: When Janet is trying to work out how the other personalities ended up inside Daniel, Tryan is the personality most helpful to her efforts; while he's only a second-rank engineer, he at least understands the science behind the stasis pods and how they work, even if he can't speculate on how the current situation happened.
- Cryonics Failure: When the team are doing a head count of the passengers in stasis after they first find the crashed ship, O'Neill sees that one of the stasis pods has smashed and the person inside is now little more than a withered corpse. O'Neill promptly begins counting backwards.O'Neill: 104... 105... 106... [O'Neill shines his torch on the cryopod, noting the corpse] ...105.
- Determinator: Fraiser gets her moment to shine here, going toe-to-toe with Martice and making it clear that she doesn't intend to let Daniel go without a hell of a fight.Fraiser: You don't belong in that man's body, and I intend to take it back!
- Evil Brit: Martice is by far the most antagonistic of the personalities inhabiting Daniel's body and speaks with an upper-class English accent. Subverted with Tryan, however, who also has a British-sounding accent — though it's not quite as "refined" — and is considerably more helpful.
- Hearing Voices: The personality in control of Daniel's body at any given time is able to hear the voices of the others trying to break through.
- Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Basically the reason Pharrin did all this, as he had no idea of the existence of the Stargate and assumed that the only way he could save any of his people was with the resources available to him.
- It's All About Me:
- The Sovereign seems to think so. While he claims he wants to do his duty to his people, it's clear that he only cares about his own well-being. When the solution requires him to sacrifice Daniel's body in order to ensure the survival of the rest of his people, he outright refuses. They only go through with the plan because nobody agrees with him.
- Pharrin has a more benevolent version of this, immediately resorting to a plan that he 'knows' will work rather than taking a chance that the new arrivals will be able to offer technology and resources that can help him in other ways.
- Large Ham: Martice.
- Layman's Terms:Carter: Sir, these people are alive. At least, they're in some form of cryogenic sleep. Any civilization without faster-than-light technology would have to resort to something like this in order to cross the vast distances between stars, otherwise it would take an entire generation or more, and given the effects of relativity —O'Neill: We've got a ship load of frozen people.Carter: ...That would be the more succinct way of putting it, yes, sir.
- Lottery of Doom: The survivors on the Stromos and two other ships were primarily chosen by lottery. Keenin was an exception, as was his father Pharrin, a crewman on the Stromos, who was allowed to choose one family member to bring with him.
- More Expendable Than You: Keenin's mother insisted that Pharrin choose Keenan as his one family member aboard the Stromos rather than herself. Keenin expresses Survivor Guilt over this.
- Only Sane Man: Of the personalities occupying Daniel's body, the engineer Tryan is the only one to be remotely helpful, to the point where Fraiser is visibly relieved whenever he surfaces; Tryan explicitly speculates at one point that he has a higher pain threshold than the others that makes it easier for him to stay in control over the other personalities.
- Oh, Crap!: Daniel('s body) gets one when Tryan - an engineer aboard the Stromos - realises the enormity of his - and the other personalities' - fate.Tryan: A cryosleeper's consciousness is stored in the same memory module that maintains the sleeper's body. There is simply no way to separate them or send the consciousness to any other than its corresponding body, unless-... [the realisation dawns on his face] ...oh, no. [beat] Unless the sleepers' bodies are dead.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Lampshaded when Martice refers to Fraiser as "the small woman".
- Precision F-Strike:Martice: You still don't realize who you are talking to!Fraiser: I don't give a damn!!
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Daniel — or more accurately, one of the personalities possessing Daniel — does this when he regains consciousness to find himself face-to-face with Teal'c.
- Security Cling: One of the personalities, a young child named Keenin, ends up clinging to Fraiser for comfort.
- Showing Off the New Body: At one point Martice takes a moment to admire Daniel's body in the mirror and notes that he doesn't necessarily mind being stuck there, since it's "younger and stronger" than his own.
- Shout-Out: It seems likely that the Stromos is a reference to the Nostromo, which kept its crew in similar stasis pods.
- Sleeper Starship: The Stromos, since it apparently lacks faster-than-light capabilities. In a flashback, Pharrin tells Keenin that hundreds of years will have passed by the time they reach their destination.
- Something Only They Would Say: When O'Neill and Carter first regain consciousness after returning to Earth, Hammond and Fraiser are worried that they might be in a similar state to Daniel. O'Neill puts their minds at ease.Hammond: Colonel. Major. How are you feeling.O'Neill: Got a nail in my head, sir.Hammond: That sounds like our Colonel O'Neill.
- Spock Speak: Teal'c gets a stellar one in this episode, to the point where O'Neill's response could be construed as Richard Dean Anderson Leaning on the Fourth Wall.O'Neill: How'd he get stuck in here?
Teal'c: Daniel Jackson's preliminary electroencephalogramnote proved anomalous.
O'Neill: ...I dare you to say that again. - Talking to Themself: Pharrin and later Daniel begin to do this as the personalities inside them begin to merge more and more.
- Third-Person Person: Pharrin, sort of. The "democracy of one" that is Pharrin's mind refers to the original Pharrin in the third person.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Pharrin is trying to save the lives of his people, including his son, but he essentially forces Daniel to become a "lifeboat" against his will in order to do so.
- You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: Martice invokes this multiple times to try and bully Fraiser into bending to his will. Given that this is Fraiser we're talking about, it doesn't really work out that way.
