"What's to feel bad about? I mean, it probably took the Ancients a thousand years to build the gate system, and I wrecked it in a single day!"
— Dr. Jay Felger
After Hammond threatens to fire him for his incompetence, Dr. Felger — with some assistance from Carter — designs a computer virus that he hopes can be used to disable stargates controlled by the Goa'uld. Unfortunately, a test of the virus results in the entire gate network being taken offline, leaving the other members of SG-1 stranded offworld.
"Avenger 2.0" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: O'Neill calls Felger "Folger" at the beginning of the episode, though it's possible he's doing it on purpose.
- Actor Allusion: Before leaving for P5S-117, Dr. Felger is seen packing a roll of duct tape in his backpack, a nod to Patrick McKenna's role as Harold Green on The Red Green Show.
- Analogy Backfire:Felger: Pretty cool, isn't it? You and I working together. We're sort of like the intellectual Butch and Sundance of the SGC.Carter: Butch and Sundance got cornered and killed by the Bolivian army.Felger: ...That's a good point, yeah.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Felger's assistant Chloe has shades of this.
- Big Damn Heroes: O'Neill and Teal'c arrive by ship to rescue Carter and Felger when they're pinned down by Ba'al's forces at the end of the episode.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Lampshaded by Carter when she's trying to explain to Hammond why they need Felger, specifically, to solve the problem.Carter: Okay, I admit it: he's a complete screw-up. He makes rash decisions based on sketchy evidence, he's clumsy in the lab, he's always late, and quite frankly, it wouldn't kill him to ease up on the aftershave, but the fact is, sir, he's at Stargate Command because he's a brilliant scientist. And no one understands that virus better than he does.
- Call-Back: In "The Other Guys," there's a scene when Felger uses the word "hinky" and Coombs objects that it's not a real word. In this episode, Felger again uses the word "hinky", prompting Carter to briefly question it. (For the record, "hinky" is a real word. It means suspicious or, more informally, strange.)
- Comically Missing the Point: Felger is completely oblivious to Chloe's attraction to him until she gives him a Now or Never Kiss.
- Computer Virus: "Avenger" works like a computer virus to disable the DHD of another stargate by scrambling the symbols and coordinates. Unfortunately Ba'al gets a hold of it and takes it a step further by modifying it and causing it to spread throughout the entire gate network, giving him the advantage over the other system lords as he controls the largest fleet.
- Continuity Nod:
- Carter reminds O'Neill that Felger did save their lives once.
- While trying to reassure Felger that he's not the only one who makes mistakes, Carter tells him about the time her adjustments to the dialing program almost killed a planet's sun.
- Daydream Surprise: The ending of the episode echoes that of Felger's first appearance, with him daydreaming about Carter and Chloe fighting for his affections.
- Death Glare: Hammond fixes Felger with a particularly epic one of these to get him to stop hanging around the control room.
- Disability Immunity: Because the SGC has no DHD for their Stargate and instead has an improvised system to operate the stargate which uses the manual dialing interface on the Gate itself (which previously has proven to be somewhat unreliable since not all error codes the gate may generate are understood), their Stargate becomes the only one in the galaxy that can reliably dial out to the intended destination.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Felger has one when Carter mentions that the SGC uses its own dialing program, thinking that they can simply upload it to the gate network to counteract the effects of the virus.
- Gone Horribly Right: Ultimately subverted. Folger initially thought his virus caused the entire shutdown of the gate system, but it was actually Baal who altered the virus.
- Good News, Bad News: Felger realizes the news of his Avenger virus not causing the gate system to crash, but that he and Carter being stranded on a Goa'uld world qualified as this trope.
- Good with Numbers: Felger describes Chloe this way when she instantly calculates the number of possible combinations from randomly dialing the gate.
- Gunship Rescue: Before Ba'al's Jaffa can finish them off, Carter and Felger are saved by O'Neill and Teal'c, who are piloting a stolen Al'kesh.
- Hard-Work Montage: Happens as Carter, Felger and Chloe are designing the virus.
- Heroic BSoD: Felger lapses into one of these after his first attempt to fix the problem fails, running away from the base until Carter tracks him down and gives him a pep talk.
- Hyperventilation Bag: Felger is shown having to breathe into a paper bag when he realizes just how badly he's screwed up.
- Ironic Echo Cut: When Felger comes up with his first "solution" to the problem:Felger: Trust me, Major, this is gonna work!(Cut to a video transmission from Daniel, who is still stuck offworld)Daniel: Yeah, sorry to rain on your parade, guys, but it didn't work!
- Lower-Deck Episode: Mostly revolves around Felger's exploits.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Felger and Carter upload the virus with the hopes of disabling the gate on a planet controlled by Ba'al, only for Ba'al to use it for his own purposes and take out the entire network, stranding several teams offworld in perilous situations.
- Noodle Incident:Felger: Chemistry 201, I had an incident with my midterm lab. They got the fire under control in about an hour, but poor Mr. Hoffman, his eyebrows never grew back.
- Now or Never Kiss: Chloe lays one on Felger before he leaves with Carter to try and upload an antivirus to the Stargate on Ba'al's planet.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Stranded offworld and under Goa'uld attack, O'Neill eventually gets bored of waiting for Felger to fix the problem. Instead, his team somehow manages to steal an Al'kesh, fly it to the planet where Carter and Felger are, and rescue them.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Felger goes from building a (malfunctioning) plasma gun to writing a sophisticated computer program. It's mentioned that he's worked on numerous other projects as well, though few if any have actually borne fruit.
- Out of Focus: Carter still gets a lot of screentime, but the other three members of the team only appear in a few brief scenes each and spend most of the episode stranded offworld.
- Sequel Episode: To "The Other Guys".
- Shown Their Work: The virus code that Carter writes on the whiteboard during the Hard-Work Montage is fairly typical of object-oriented programming languages.
- Tranquil Fury: General Hammond never once raises his voice, but this is probably the angriest you'll ever see him.
