Warning! Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!

This was a pretty decent season. We finally got to see Apophis meet his end, and though unfortunately we got another episode of replicators in the process, it was cool to see them crawling all over Apophis’s personal force field as his ship crashed into a planet. Neat. 

Speaking of the replicators, season five did manage to make them even lamer than they already were by revealing that they were created as toys by this childish android. Give me a break, writers. Any scariness they had as a villain was completely torn away.

The Warrior was a great episode written by Christopher Judge (Teal’c) in which a minor Goa’uld (Imhotep) poses as a rebel Jaffa to regain power. If only they’d gotten Arnold Vosloo to play Imhotep. In all seriousness though, Rick Worthy turns in a great performance as the “Jaffa” leader.

We also get 2001, a sort of followup to the fantastic season four episode 2010, set ten years into the future where an ally that seemed too good to be true, turns out to have been too good to be true and the SG-1 team die in a successful attempt to send a note back in time warning their past selves not to visit a certain planet. In 2001 they do in fact meet up with this race, but fortunately figure out their true nature before things get out of hand.

Other than the episode with the android girl the only one I truly didn’t care for in season five was Wormhole X-Treme!, featuring an alien SG-1 had previously met whose memories were being manipulated leading him to create a TV series that closely resembles the work of the SGC and SG-1 in particular. I usually really appreciate all of the little meta things the writers work into the show, and I can appreciate that they don’t take themselves too seriously, but I just felt that this episode made a little too much fun of the series, and really detracted from the usual tone of the show. O’Neill’s frequent jokes aside, the show deals with life and death matters, and I hated to lose the suspension of disbelief that way.

Speaking of life and death, season five is where we have to say goodbye to Daniel Jackson, at least for now. After receiving a deadly dose of radiation performing a selfless and heroic act, Jackson begins to die a slow and painful death, but in the end ascends to a higher plane of existence. Corny, maybe, but I found this to be perhaps the most touching episode of the show to date. Well done.

Random Series Thoughts: Does every male in the universe fall in love with Carter? Seriously though, it’s a nice move to avoid the sci-fi cliche of having the male leader be the one that gets all the romantic attention. I also admire the fact that the writers usually avoid sexualizing Carter, instead focusing on her brains and her combat skills.

Thanks again to GateWorld for providing me with an excellent episode guide to help me remember which episodes were in this season!