Season 7, Episode 13 - Grace

Air Date (UK): January 6, 2004
Air Date (US): January 16, 2004

Samantha Carter travels to retrieve the stranded Prometheus (last seen in Season 6's Memento). On their way back to Earth, she and the crew run into trouble.

Credits | Spoilers | Teaser

If you have QuickTime, you can view the 30 second promo for the second half of Season 7 here:
Season 7 Promo

I was really very dissappointed with this episode and thought it was really lacking in any decent plot at all. I knew it was going to be a dream episode and probably not going to really go anywhere, but I had at least hoped that we would learn more about Carter's past and not just her feelings towards the team... eh I mean Jack

I thought the special effects were pretty nice and probably the main redeeming feature. I do however think that they were wasted on this episode and they should have put them in an episode that was better and totally blown us away rather than trying to make this episode better.

For some odd reason this really didn't feel like a Stargate episode to me. I'm not sure what it was, but something about how it was filmed and the audio just seemed slightly off. It might just be how it was broadcast, but I don't know

I didn't think the Prometheus Captain did too well on the acting side and his performance seemed a little farcical to me... it sounded too much like he was trying to be Captain Kirk... and yes the alien ship did look a little like a Romulan Warbird at times, but I managed to get past that.

I guess if anything at least the shippers will be in heaven - this was overloaded with shipper stuff.

Overall, this is probably in my top 5 worst episodes.

... oh was it just me or did Carter not have the cut on her head at all in the scene at the end?

as soon as im too lazy for a full review, here is a basic one:

+nice to see the x303 again
+great special effects
+nice to see jacob, always good

-monotonous storyline
-not very interesting, not much happened, ohh sams stuck on her own yay
-i dont know what the meaning of that kid was
-didnt seemed wrapped up at the end
-i dont care much for sam jack

total rating

**

A disappointing episode after Evolution-I thought a corner had been turned.
I did like the way in which the other memebers of the team were used to represent the different aspects of Carters character, but the episode seemed dis-jointed in parts and her head wound seemed to disappear and change sides at random throughout the episode!
I can apreciate why they put the whole Jack thing in, the "should I give up on you" the unattainable love interest but, it just did not seem right.
a mediocre episode in my opinion- though I should add, this in no way reflects on AT's acting. I thought she played it well tonight- just the right amount of "am I going crazy?" and "how do I get out of here?" with touchy-feely realisations about her life and career.

This post has been edited by stargatesweetie: Jan 6th 2004, 4:47 PM

Personally I thought this was a very good episode. We learned a lot about Sam's feelings, emotions and desires and the battle scene at the start was good too. Also I feel that this will be very important in the development of Sam's character later in the season and also into Season 8.
The special effects were also good in this episode but they could have done without them. Do we really need that good of a cloud or the enemy ship to look so like a Warbird. Good but not spectacular, possibly a slight waste of money if we want anything like 622's Pyramid explosion at the end of the Season.
Hopefull one more good thing will come from this - all stories, rumours, polls. etc. of a Sam/Jack relationship can finally be laid to rest. Finally. FOREVER. **** out of 5 from me. Bring on 714.

First of all hi everyone im a bit of a newb here and this is my first ever post so here goes...

Not being a huge fan of the prometheus storyline, I wasn't too impressed with the episode...it felt very much like Enterprise to me, very 'Star-Trekky'. Aesir I think you're right about some very good effects, and fair play to the visuals team for that, but although the plot was somewhat lacking I think maybe its a bit harsh to place this in the worst five ever in my opinion.
I think that maybe although she's a great actress we might have seen a little too much of Tapping in this episode...it was all a bit too much oon one level for me and needed more depth - different scenes with different people etc. I agree that it was good to see Jacob showing his face in this...as one of my avourite characters its good to see him having a more recurring role.

All in all not bad but could have been much better...

[/QUOTE]Wow i can't believe u guys didn't find it that good sure the storyline could have been improved but the small scenes within the story and those that make it up were quite damn good. For example the talk between Sam and Jacob was great as it was a father daughter talk which was basically telling her to live a little outside her career and get herself a man.

Sam and Jack's "imaginery" talk about how he would never ask her to give up her career etc, pretty good acting going on here people

Anyone else notice that Teal'c called Sam "Samantha" for the very first time instead of Major Carter. That little weaner girl pissed me off a bit though and what was with that ship just attacking the Prometheus for bugger all reason. It was a pretty lame fight i mean we got our ass's wooped and then we still help them get out of the gas cloud. We should have got our people back and just said thanks very much i'm off now

I would give this ep a 6.5/10 as the storyline could have been a tad better but the acting and the scenes between the characters was amazing. Sure i was expecting something different but hey..........i always like a surprise.

Looking forward to "Fall Out" to see Jonas again.

Yeah thats a good point Aesir, i guess we can only hope that he would have said those things. I can also see what u mean about getting inside sams head and not learning a great deal about her past aswell, i guess its an oppurtunity wasted in a way, however we did learn stuff about her now etc. The only other time i can think of where we got inside her head was in "Jolinar's Memories" and we learnt a bit about her past then so you know............interesting reading your comments by the way Aesir, always very interesting to see a different aspect.

This post has been edited by Jon The UK SG-1 Fan: Jan 6th 2004, 5:07 PM

I think a father daughter talk like this would have been good, but don't forget that it was Sam talking to herself really as Jacob wasn't there... therefore it wasn't a proper father daughter talk. We really have no idea if he would have said any of those things, although I can't see it being impossible. I'm still really dissappointed that we got inside her head and yet didn't get to learn much about her past... reading spoilers, some future episodes look promising on this however.

Either way, I thought this was a great Carter-episode, especially Carter crying moments

Pretty disappointing episode however I was glad had a space fight. Pretty good special effects however ship did look a bit like Romulan Warbird.

I did like this episode but I have to agree with the whole it was very Star-Trekky and didn't feel like proper Stargate line. I got the feeling in this episode that they were trying to find a way to 'free up' Sam a bit for future romantic entanglements that don't involve Jack- he says that he's the 'safe bet' and so basically eradicates any guilt she may have felt for starting a new relationship. I mean, I know it wasn't really him and all, but still.

I did think the Father/Daughter chat was very good- quite poignant really. Amanda Tapping once described Sam as a hybrid of the other members of her team, and I think this episode showed this point quite well without making it seem as though she has no character of her own. It did need more of a plot though- kinda like 'Entity', where the whole point of the episode is for Jack to kill Sam, 'Grace' seems to exist to open Sam's options up and explore her character. I'm all for this, but within a detailed and engaging storyline.

On a lighter note though, great acting by AT! Though I noticed the wound on her head moved around a lot too...

This post has been edited by fruitloopy: Jan 6th 2004, 5:13 PM

I did enjoy this one and it was pretty much as I expected. With Chimera around the corner at some point, it was always a good bet that the Jack/Sam talk at the end was going to be about Sam breaking away and moving on and deciding to find someone she could have a relationship with. So no surprises there.

Good grief, but that Prometheus is one ugly mother of a ship though! If you ask me those aliens were just so offended by having something that obscene wandering around the universe they tried shooting it out of the stars just from a sense of decency.

Personally, I think Sam's fooling herself with her analysis of her relationship with Jack, but there you go.

I thought the final scene was very poignant, with Jack maintaining the status quo of their relationship at its usual level, while being completely unaware that she's made the decision to move on. <snuffle>

There wasn't as much character relationship stuff among the guys as I thought there would be and that disappointed me a little. And I could perhaps have done with more scenes back at the SGC. But those are minor points.

Did anyone else think that the scene in the locker room between Jack and Teal'c ended rather oddly? Abruptly? And for once I thought the comic timing was off in the initial joke. If you're going to do that old standby of someone being forced into a conversation by silence and acting as though they were nagged into it, you really need more of a pause between refusing to talk and caving in. It was too rushed to really work, imo.

And, come on, Sam! He's a figment of your imagination and you still can't kiss him other than in your...sub-imagination? Inner imagination? ROTFL! Actually, that was rather cute. <g>

Anyway, just some very small niggles, but overall a really good episode which didn't disappoint me at all.

Albion

What about Jack? Remember how he dealt with sam missing for just 4 days. Jack obviously have feelings for her and Carter just manged to convince herself that Jack probably don't have feelings for her. - Ahhh why are those 2 so blind?!

Yeah- they've reignited the whole shipper debate again alright- the writers did what they said they would do at least. Though in some ways I wish they hadn't-

This wasn't as clear cut as I thought it would be... I dunno- I just think that the version of the episode that I had in my mind was going to be more understandable and not as enigmatic? (Maybe I should have written it? Nah, I didn't think so either.)

Maybe it was confusing because it was her mind working?
If Grace was part of her mind and imagination- then what did she represent? If she was the human form of the gas nebula thingy- then why did she appear in that image to Carter?

Was it Carter when she was a little girl? Or was it an imaginary image that Carter had somewhere locked away of what she would imagine her kid to look like?

Speaking as die hard SamandJack shipper, the fact that she's 'moved on' had really got to me. I just hope that in chimera her boyfriend only lasts one episode and then she realises that she can't live without Jack and decides that looking and not touching is better than nothing.

A girl can dream....

Anyway, on a lighter note, JONAS IS BACK NEXT WEEK!!!!!!!! I leant all my season six episodes to a friend for the past few weeks and found that I actually really missed Jonas! I hadn't realised he'd grown on me so much. Can't wait!

Hmm. Interesting to see some mixed reactions to this.

Personally I'd agree with the former assesment that it felt a little like a Star Trek episode. Not that this is a bad thing though, but I'm sure the person-gets-knocked-out-and-entire-episode-is-done-in-their-mind-only has been done a hundred times before. Hey, no such thing as a new idea right?
The special effects were great IMO. I particularly loved the way the alien ship's guns came out. Very cool indeed and I don't care that it looked a little Romulan warbirdy...not such a thing as an original idea and all that.

I was expecting something a little more. More explanation of who the aliens on the ship were, why they attacked, what the whole deal with the being stuck in the cloud was and who then little girl was supposed to represent.
I was not expecting quite so much 'ship. The spoilers said "potential for some 'ship"...er...talk about understatement!
Basically from the moment that whole father/daughter talk took place it was amost all about about relationships.
I'm gonna break it down here just to wind up all those rabid shippers who have to wait almost another two weeks to see this on a reasonable sized screen:

Jack and Daniel's little chat in the elevator seemed strained and difficult. Jack obviously very concerned and Daniel obviously not entirely comfortable with getting Jack to open up on his concerns.
Sam and Jacob (really that aspect of her personality which is represented by Jacob) talking about her lonliness and need for love. Absolutely outstanding acting by AT here.
Then we had Teal'c and Jack in the locker room being reflective of a similar scene between Sam and Teal'c in Paradise Lost. They knew this so they let the actors say it. But they left us in no doubt that Teal'c is definitely aware that Sam and Jack have a different conection than the rest of the team.
Sam and Jack's chat...ahhh...absolute shipper bloody heaven. Actually for one sad moment there I thought I'd slipped into Cheesy Fanfic World but no, it was a real episode. From the moment he called her "Samantha" to his admitance that he was a sure bet and she was the complicated one. (I can't remember exact phrasing here because two very anoying males were retching at the other end of the couch as I was watching ). Anyway. This little scene was basically that scene where they talk about it, the one where one of them mutters the imortal "I could resign" phrase...the one I never ever thought I'd ever see in anything other than fanfic. This would be a very bad thing indeed if it wasn't for the fact that it happened in Carter's mind only. Oh and that kiss that we all knew was a dream kiss? Well actually turns out to be Carter having a fanatsy inside her hallucination kiss...duh! Never saw that coming.
Edited to add: A lot of people have interpreted this as Carter making a decision to move on and, while I'll agree that this is what she has done, I think she's done so because she has "accepted" that Jack and her don't really have a chance if they are both to stay in the millitary. Basically I think she knows Jack would have her in a cold minute but that they can't so she's gonna look for second best...does that make sense?
This is bookended by a nicely mildly shippy ending that reflected pretty clearly that this isn't going any further but not because they don't want it to. Basically folks, anyone still in any denial about the way Sam and Jack feel about each other is going to get their noromo butts kicked but good after seeing this.

Ok. That's the Rabid Shipper Review over with, now onto the rest of it.
It's great to see Amanda Tapping get a real chance to showcase her talent like this and I think she did herself really proud.
I liked the way the other people in Carter's conciousness came across and not their normal characters. Teal'c is the paranoid one, Daniel the hyperactive theorist, Jacob the introspective side and Jack the pragmatist. I'm not sure what the little girl was supposed to represent. I think she was the logic and the reason Carter was struggling to understand her was because she was suffering a concussion. I don't know who the little girl was supposed to represent. A future child maybe?
But why was she having these hallucinations in the first place? Just the head injury or something more?
I'd have liked to have seen less of the shippy stuff (yes you heard...less!) and more action and exposition. Carter seemed to get out of her predicament awfully easily once she'd sussed it out. I didn't really get any true sense of danger for her. But whoever said they wanted to see more Carter whumping, well you got it this year that's for sure. Her head injusry did seem to migrate from left to right a couple of times but I thought that was because she was looking in a mirror maybe?

Nitpick Of The Week: What I would like to know though is where she found time to reapply her mascara while she was on the ship. She must have found a bumper load of it in stores.

Best Line: Teal'c saying nothing in the locker room and prompting Jack's response. Teal'c always gets the best lines.

Overall I thought it was a good enough episoide, but that the plot and tension were slightly sacrificed for the charater development and relationship aspect of the story.

This post has been edited by Majikthize: Jan 6th 2004, 6:03 PM

Well, I spent the entire episode thinking the little girl was just what Daniel claimed she was - the manifestation of the cloud entity. Never occurred to me she was anything else! Now, have to say, I'm not sure what was going on any more! <G> If she was the cloud entity - was there a cloud entity? - they didn't really go anywhere with that theory, did they? Explain why it was helping Sam or what the heck it was after.... Didn't really cover it at all.... So, now that I think on it, seems dodgy that's what she was.

Hmmmmmmmm...should have been paying more attention at the time, I guess. But there was all that character relationship stuff going on. It distracted me.

Confused now. <g> Still, that's what I love about episode discussion threads. They point up all the things you never thought of and make you think and re-evaluate what you thought you already knew. That's pretty cool.

Albion

i actually really liked this episode! Amanda Tapping was absolutley brilliant. At the beginning it did feel like a Star Trek episode but after Carter got knocked out it didn't. This episode also got u really thinking about who the little girl was and what exactly was going on with the gas cloud.
It also had humour, i was giggling away in the last scene between jack and sam and the cake thing.
especially liked the scene with Carter and Jacob, it was acted out really well by both AT and CA. Although we didn't get to learn as much about Carters past as i had hoped for we did get to see her feelings for her team mates (especially Jack) and that suited me just fine!
Overall really good episode with brilliant acting by AT!!

okay... keep in mind... I'm going by spoilers and an online narration of the episode in a chat room... I'm getting the episode in... around 9 hours... I'm only going by what I've read... I will add more later...

My first reaction... i was really POed about it ... I mean... I said I'd cope with sam and jack calling it quits, but I never knew I would enact on it. I was furious... I stormed out of the chat. I was having mixed feelings. I was like "What is going on here?" And the other forum knew it. I even threatened that I wasn't gonna watch the rest of season 7 if it was gonna go in this direction. I wasn't even gonna watch this episode.

It was a mood swing... I get those sometimes... first, it's admitting you have a problem...

After about a few hours of thinking it through, I realized that no matter what... I will not diss da stargate. This is not a Sam Show... but this is an episode that needed to be done, she needed to relieve herself of the guilt and suffering that was weighing on her weary soul. (gosh I sound so preachy!) I love the acting on it... this is such a good show that I can imagine how some of the parts were played out.

Now... I wanna see it. I look forward to seeing how it plays out... I want to see the loving and caring that I've seen in stargate during the earlier seasons. I think I'll find it here...

IM DOWNLOADING a 340mb avi atm it should be done in a few hours. so ill post more back here later! but i like just bout every ep. and wat i read from spoilers sounds good

Not to pick at the storyline or anything, but why would the attacking Aliens not have abducted Sam just because she was unconcious?

Also, was I the only one waiting for the Prometheus Captain to say "On Screen" when they discovered the aliens approaching?

Finally, the locker scene with Jack & Teal'c was definately cut off badly - At first I thought it was just a dodgy ad-break stemming from different US & UK show timings, but it looks like it was just bad editing, which is unusual.

I agree about it not 'feeling' like an SG-1 episode but every SF series seems to feel the need to do occasional character development episodes that serve no purpose other than to expand the character & generally add nothing to the story arc. Why they can't have episodes with a storyline and character development is beyond me.

This post has been edited by Spad: Jan 6th 2004, 11:54 PM

7x13 is within my top 5 favorite episodes!

How can any of you say it lacked plot or depth? How much deeper can a story go? Maybe because it didnt have giant explosions it was under-appreciated.

Here are some point of interest:

- a living entity within space. INCREDIBLE!

- Was what happened a dream or did it really happen? Were the hallucinations real hallucinations or was she just dreaming?

- Was the little girl part of the entity trying to communicate with her or just another part of her subconcious mind? If it was part of her, dosen't anyone find it interesting that she KNEW the answer to the problem all along and the girl was there simply to show her (the bubble)?

- On the other hand was the entity in space able to tape into her CONCIOUS mind and generate the hallucinations? Was the entity trying to give her the answer to the problem (the girl and the bubble)?

- Finally, Jack. Does she wan to be with Him or is she just saying she wants him so she dosen't set herself up for hurt? Does she want him or does she want something more?

This episode was not a dream ep. Itmay have seemed liked that but the only things that weren't real were the other SG1 members on the ship (her imagination after having a concussion) and the little girl , which was thought to be the physical form of the nebula she was trapped in. I thought this episode was okay but not that great, it did leave some questions about who were the race of aliens on the ship that attacked them? and so on.

Also the whole "space time" continuum thing that was going on.

She logged as it being weeks that she'd been stuck on the Prometheus- when actually it was 4 days Earth time. That was weird. Then again I think SG1 would have gone crazy/disbanded had they lost Carter for weeks coz she's too valuable and they all love her to bits! (Esp Jack it seems)