Changes: 1969 (episode)

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Template:SG1-2 "1969" is the twenty first episode of the second season of Stargate SG-1.

Synopsis

A freak accident involving a solar flare and the Stargate causes SG-1 to gate to the Earth in 1969. While trying to figure out a way back, the team is mistaken for Soviet spies and is being transferred to another facility. However, young Lt. George S. Hammond comes to render assistance so that SG-1 can return to their own time.

Plot

A powerful solar flare crossing the path of the Stargate's matter stream causes the SG-1 team to be propelled around the sun and travel back in time 30 years. They arrive in the Embarkation room, which was then a top-secret missile testing facility, and are arrested by guards that think they are Soviet spies because Dr. Daniel Jackson can speak Russian.

While Colonel Jack O'Neill is being interrogated and using comedic answers (i.e. Star Trek and Star Wars references) to obscure their true identities, a young Lieutenant searches through SG-1's possessions and discovers a note stating that he should help them, a note Major General George S. Hammond had given Captain Samantha Carter before they left. While escaping custody with the help of the lieutenant, they discover that he is in fact General Hammond, 30 years younger, who recognized the note as in his own handwriting. He gives them some money to purchase disguises (which O'Neill promises to pay back, with interest), they swear him to secrecy, and hit him with a Zat'nik'tel blast to make it look like he fought them.

The SG-1 team must find a way home—if nothing else, Teal'c will eventually be taken over by his symbiote unless he can return to the present—but it seems apparent they are doomed to be stuck in the past. However, Carter sees that the note includes two dates and times, and grasps that the dates actually describe two upcoming solar flares on the opposite side of Sol. This information was identified from research on alternative applications for the gate she was ordered to work on by General Hammond. To use these flares as an effective means of getting back to the future, they must find the Stargate.

After a bold hitchhiking maneuver by Teal'c, SG-1 is able to travel across the country with a hippie couple, Michael Clark and Jennifer Clark, who are heading to Woodstock in their bus. Late in their trip, the couple reveals that Michael has been drafted, and they are trying to decide whether or not to flee to Canada. O'Neill begins a response to Michael, but Carter stops him in order to prevent them from influencing the past. Michael is never mentioned again in the series, and his choice is not known. Donning a convincing German accent, Daniel learns the location of the Stargate from Catherine Langford. SG-1 manages to activate the gate (stored in an old Washington D.C. armory) and run through while under fire from guards.

However, they arrive in an empty, dark gate room rather than in Stargate Command that they know. An elderly woman walks in, who, it turns out, is Cassandra Fraiser, and she tells them that they stepped into the Stargate a few seconds early and were sent far into the future. Long ago, Sam told her that she must rendezvous with them. She reactivates the gate to return them to their time. The team arrives back in the normal gate room with General Hammond waiting for them. He explains that as a young lieutenant he was ordered to escort 4 trespassers out of Cheyenne Mountain. In Carter's vest pocket he found a note requesting for his assistance. Obviously he followed its instructions. All he had to do was wait for the right time to give Carter the note. He remembered the cut on Carter's hand as he removed the handcuffs. General Hammond also reminds O’Neill of the money he owes him ($539.50, including interest).

References

1928; 1945; 1969; Aemonus; Albuquerque; Amarillo; Amplifier bracelet; Antarctica; Apollo program; Apophis; Babylon; Canada; Central Intelligence Agency; Cheyenne Mountain; Chicago; China; Cigarette; Court-martial; Dog tag; Earth's Moon; First Prime; Garage Door Opener; Grandfather Paradox; Great Wall; Handcuffs; Heinrich Gruber; Heart attack; Ernest Littlefield; New Jersey Star; New Mexico; New York City; Richard Nixon; Nuclear warhead; Philadelphia; Russia; Russian language; SG-5; Slavery; Sol; Solar flare; St. Louis; Star Trek; Star Wars; Summer White House; Texas; Vietnam War; Washington D.C.; The Wizard of Oz; Zat'nik'tel

Notable Quotes

Soldier: Вы советский шпион? (Are you a Soviet spy?)
Jackson: Нет. (No.)
O'Neill: Daniel!?
Jackson: He just asked if we were Soviet spies, I just... (he suddenly realizes his mistake)
Soldier: (to O'Neill) Come with me.
O'Neill: Sure, you bet. (to Daniel on the way past) Нет!?

Thornbird: I'm Major Robert Thornbird. And you are?
O'Neill: Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.
Thornbird: Your dog tags say otherwise.
O'Neill: They're lying.
Thornbird: Your American accent is very impressive, Mr. Kirk. Before we ship you out and hand you over to wherever it is they take spies such as yourself, I wanted a word. Your little incursion into our training facility is going to leave an embarrassing mark on my record.
O'Neill: Training facility?
Thornbird: You don't think we'd test fire a real missile twenty-eight floors inside a mountain, do you?
O'Neill: Listen, you don't have the exact date—
Thornbird: What was the weapon you used?
O'Neill: Weapon?
Thornbird: Our cameras saw some sort of weapon.
O'Neill: Oh. Well, it's hard to say.
Thornbird: Some sort of state secret?
O'Neill: No, just difficult to pronounce.

O'Neill: Listen, I don't know where we're headed, but they'll probably try to split us up, so we're not gonna have much time to...
Carter: Escape and hopefully live out the rest of our lives without affecting history.
O'Neill: Or...
Carter: I can't think of an "or" at the moment sir.
Jackson: No "or?"
O'Neill: There's an "or."
Jackson: There's an "or?"
Carter: Sir, you can't just will something to happen because you want it to be a certain way.
O'Neill: Captain, where there's a will there's an "or." Way.

O'Neill: Aunty Em! Aunty Em!

Michael: After the concert, me and Jenny, we're even thinking of crossing the border up to Canada.
Teal'c: For what reason?
Michael: You know, man. The war.
Teal'c': The war with Canada?
Michael: No.

O'Neill: We came to Earth to hide amongst your people, a long, long time ago.
Jackson: From a galaxy far, far away.

Notes

Stargate Wiki has 15 images related to 1969.

When SG-1 originally travels to the year 1969 in the teaser of the episode, they emerge in the past time frame at the same location where they were in the present: the interior of Cheyenne Mountain. However, in all later instances of Stargate time travel, including the conclusion of this episode, those individuals traveling through time emerge through the Stargate of the destination time frame, rather than simply appearing in the new time.
Though it is not explicitly stated in this episode, Dr. Daniel Jackson teaches Teal'c how to drive a car, as shown by Teal'c driving the bus. When Teal'c drives a car in the season 6 episode "Smoke and Mirrors", Jonas Quinn questions him, "Who taught you to drive?" Teal'c replies, "Daniel Jackson." Jonas asks when; the reply is "I believe the year was 1969."
During the episode "200", Daniel, Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter, and Teal'c hint that Colonel Jack O'Neill fathered Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell while back in time during this episode. The comments, however, were made in jest and were not to be taken seriously.
Jackson reveals that he speaks 23 languages. Since this episode, he has also learned to speak at least three more languages, Ancient, Goa'uld, and Unas.
Daniel also reveals that he was four years old in 1969, which would have put his birth in 1965. Michael Shanks, the actor who plays Daniel Jackson, was in fact born on December 15, 1970, making him almost 6 years younger than his character.
The 1969 Colorado license plates on the bus are designated PJ-2251, from Arapahoe County, near Denver.
The actual NORAD facility under Cheyenne Mountain does not, and never did, house a missile training silo. The mission of Cheyenne Mountain Air Station is strictly early-warning. Training silos are only found at missile bases, such as Vandenberg AFB, California; F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming; or Grand Forks AFB, North Dakota.
Carter only half way explains the Grandfather Paradox. It holds that if a man travels in time to before his father was conceived and murders his grandfather than he himself would never be born, but because the murderer was never born then there was no reason for his grandfather to be killed, hence the killer will still be alive. In SG-1's case had they stopped the development of the Stargate program there would therefore be no reason for SG-1 to have traveled back in time and stop it, hence the program would happen.
O'Neill mentions a desire to get to the Interstate, however, the montage section the party is show traveling on US Route 66 (which ran from Chicago to Los Angeles). US 66 was never a part of the Interstate Highway System, however, since 66 did not run through Colorado they may have traveled on the Interstate to get to 66.
Star Trek first aired in 1966, 3 years before this episode took place. The name James T Kirk would have been known, though it is possible that the base commander had not heard of it, since the show was obscure and had a cult like audience in the 1960s.
Concept of time travel in that episode is different from others featuring time travel. In it, travels from the past do not create an alternate timeline, as Major General George S. Hammond had memories of interacting with SG-1 before he sent them into past and altered his own past as well and sent a note with them because he received a note in the past.
The only difference to this solar flare time traveling event is a program Carter wrote prior to their gate travel "to upgrade the computers drift calculation to include gravitational space-time warping" due to the matter streams proximity to the Sun. It is possible this could have lead to the strange circumstance where "for a second or two [SG-1] we were in both time-frames simultaneously", which caused them to phase out of the SGC in 1999 and into the missile test facility in 1969, similar to how the Tok'ra, Teal'c and Vala Mal Doran phased out in Stargate: Continuum, although this is only conjecture.
The newspaper O'Neill buys to check the date (August 10, 1969) shows two headlines, "Nixon to Vacation at the Summer White House" and "Sharon Tate, Four Others Murdered". The latter refers to the infamous Charles Manson murders which had occurred the day before, August 9.
In the German version, Jackson uses a French accent instead of a German one while talking to Catherine about the Stargate.
The cut on Carter's hand, which told Hammond which mission would cause the jump, occurred in the episode "One False Step" when Carter tried to retrieve Jackson's knife from one of the aliens, but accidentally gets cut. Although when she tried to retrieve the knife she appeared to be cut on the palm of her hand.
In the book Stargate SG-1: Roswell, it's revealed that the device Cassandra Fraiser uses is both a remote Dial Home Device and a time travel device that works by the user focusing on the time and place they wish a wormhole to be opened to. It can only be used by someone with Naquadah in their blood which Cassandra does have, allowing her to use it.
The planet where SG-1 was headed to, when instead due to the solar flare they traveled back in time, was Aemonus, the same designation as in the season 2 RPG.
Fifteen episodes earlier in "Thor's Chariot," Daniel says that he has a problem with heights, yet in this episode, he fearlessly scales the side of the 2-story-high crate in which the Stargate was stored in order to open it... he seems to have gotten over his phobia rather quickly in the few months it had been since then.
This is the last of two episodes of Stargate SG-1 directed by Charles Correll.
Alex Zahara (Michael Clark) previously played Xe'ls in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Spirits".
In the novel Stargate SG-1: Moebius Squared, its revealed that the time travel events of this episode affected Carter's personal history: knowing that he would grow old and eventually send the note to himself in the past, the then Lieutenant Hammond took a great risk to save Jacob Carter a few months later in Vietnam as he couldn't send the note if he was dead. In the timeline created by SG-1 traveling back to ancient Egypt, this changed as without this certainty, Hammond didn't take the risk and Jacob died. All Hammond did was make sure his body was recovered. This led to Carter never joining the Air Force in that timeline due to being afraid of her mother's reaction.
The concert that Michael and Jennier were heading to was Woodstock which took place from August 15 to August 18.

Goofs

When the bus approaches Chicago, the Sears Tower (now called Willis Tower) is shown in the skyline, although its construction did not begin until 1970.
Although the bus is surrounded by vintage vehicles on the bridge, oncoming traffic is that of more modern cars.
When O'Neill is explaining to Young Hammond their connection, he says, "Now for some reason thirty years ago you decided to help us." Technically, General Hammond helped them thirty years in the future from 1969, not "thirty years ago."

In other languages

French: 1969
German: 1969
Italian: Viaggio nel Tempo (Time Travel)
Spanish: 1969
Czech: Rok 1969 (1969)
Hungarian: 1969

External links

Template:SciFi
1969 on the official MGM website. (backup link)
1969 on GateWorld. (backup link)
1969 article on Stargate SG-1 Solutions' The StargateWiki

@@ Line 106: / Line 106: @@
 *Although the bus is surrounded by vintage vehicles on the bridge, oncoming traffic is that of more modern cars.
 *When O'Neill is explaining to Young Hammond their connection, he says, "Now for some reason thirty years ago you decided to help us." Technically, General Hammond helped them thirty years in the future from 1969, not "thirty years ''ago''."
-*When O'Neill was interrogated, he made a reference to Star Wars'', ''however the first Star Wars film was not released until 1977. Therefore, his interrogator would not have known what he refered to.
 ==In other languages==