"Demons" is the eighth episode of the third season of Stargate SG-1.
Synopsis
SG-1 arrives on a Medieval planet where the Christian inhabitants believe SG-1 to be "demons" because they arrived through the Stargate. Teal'c is accused of witchcraft by the village Canon.
Plot
The Medieval planet.
The SG-1 team arrives on a primitive planet that they soon discover has medieval Christian beliefs. At first, they speculate whether or not a Goa'uld is posing as Yahweh of Judaism and Christianity. The team enters the village and sees a girl named Mary chained up to a pole, they release her and Simon, a monk from the village, comes up to them and beg for the girl's life. He is told by the team that they are not demons, and the girl is not possessed, she is just sick (she only has chickenpox). As he tells them of the demon that comes to the village, an Unas enters, and demands five sacrifices by the next day, as there was no one for him to get now. SG-1 realizes Sokar plays Satan in this world.
The Aerial Zat'nik'tel Platform hits SG-1.
The Canon arrives at the village, and is told about the happening. The Canon is the one to choose those to be given to the Unas and blatantly abuses the position. He wears a "magical" ring, that seems to be of Goa'uld technology, that allows him to summon lightning to strike others. Feeling threatened by SG-1, he uses this ring to incapacitate them and rallies the townspeople against them by calling them demons (since they came from the "Circle of Darkness", the local name for the Stargate).
Teal'c is accused of witchcraft and put through The Tests on the basis of the mark of Apophis on his forehead ("a mark of the devil") and appears to drown in the last of these tests. Due to his symbiote and Kelno'reem state when drowned, Teal'c is able to "return to life", which is deemed to be a sign of Satanic influence. SG-1 is sentenced to be offered to the demon along with Mary, the girl.
The "demon" comes to the village and takes the team and the girl, SG-1 manages to escape from the Unas, and after they receive their weapons from Simon, they are able to stop the Unas, but not before the Goa'uld takes the Canon as a host. Major Samantha Carter discovers that the Canon has been possessed by the Goa'uld and both host and symbiote are killed.
A while later, as SG-1 prepare to return to Earth, they advise Simon and Mary to tell their fellow villagers to bury the Stargate so that they can spend the rest of their lives in peace.
After saying goodbye, SG-1 step through the Stargate and return to Earth as Simon and Mary look on.
Appearances
| Appearances for Demons |
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Characters
Locations
Events Weapons, equipment and technology
Science and biology
Vehicles
Sentient Species Languages Organisms Organizations and titles Miscellanea
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Notable quotes
Jackson: Most Goa'uld that we've encountered that have enslaved ancient human populations have taken on roles of other culture's deities. Ra, Apophis, Hathor, from the Egyptian pantheon—
O'Neill: Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. We got it.
Jackson: Well if these people were already Christians when they were taken from Earth, it suggests that this Goa'uld is... is playing—
O'Neill: God? As in God, God? That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?
Teal'c: I know of no Goa'uld capable of showing the necessary compassion or benevolence that I have read of in your Bible.
O'Neill: You read the Bible, Teal'c?
Teal'c: It is a significant part of your Western culture. Have you not read the Bible, O'Neill?
O'Neill: Oh, yeah. Yeah, not all of it. Actually, I'm listening to it on tape. Don't tell me how it ends.
Simon: The time of sacrifice is at hand. The elders will have to perform the trepanning ritual tonight to cleanse her.
Jackson: Oh, geez...
O'Neill: What?
Jackson: It was a procedure often done in the Middle Ages. They... well, they, they drill a hole in the person's head. By drilling a hole, the evil spirits are released, thus saving the person from eternal damnation.
O'Neill: Thus saving a person?
Jackson: Well they didn't call them the Dark Ages because it was dark.
(the villagers start screaming, and they hear the so-called demon approaching)
O'Neill: Unas?
Teal'c: You are correct, O'Neill. The first host of the Goa'uld.
O'Neill: No, no, no, no, no... We killed him. He's dead.
Teal'c: We only killed one Unas.
O'Neill: I thought there only was one! Unas, uno, one?
Teal'c: They are in fact a species.
Jackson: I think we were wrong about this Goa'uld. He isn't playing God. He's playing the Devil.
O'Neill: Carter, if I ever get the urge to help anybody again, feel free to give me a swift kick.
Jackson: Teal'c, you're... alive...
Teal'c: It is so.
O'Neill: (to Teal'c's symbiote) Way to go, Junior!!
O'Neill: (Teal'c has risen after being presumed dead, causing villagers to run screaming) You'd think these folks never saw a guy rise from the dead.
O'Neill: Major, next time Daniel gets the urge to help someone, shoot him.
O'Neill: So how long ya gonna keep this up? The demon bit. Don't get me wrong, it looks like a great gig. You got the padre in your back pocket, the hours are good, you probably get all the chicks, huh?
(the Unas picks him up by the neck, chokes him, and throws him down to the ground)
O'Neill: (in a strangled voice) Oh, me apple!!
Cast
Main Characters
- Richard Dean Anderson as Colonel Jack O'Neill
- Michael Shanks as Dr. Daniel Jackson
- Amanda Tapping as Major Samantha Carter
- Christopher Judge as Teal'c
Guest Stars
- David McNally as Simon
- Alan C. Peterson as Canon
- Laura Mennell as Mary
- Richard Morwich as Unas/Demon
- John R. Taylor as Elder
- Christopher Judge as Voice of Unas/Demon
- Peter DeLuise as Villager (Uncredited)
- Mark Hoeppner as Medieval villager (Uncredited)
- Ken Jones as Villager with kibbles (Uncredited)
Notes
- When Colonel Jack O'Neill shoots the Canon, the background music sounds remarkably similar to the soundtrack later heard often during the Ori story arc.
- O'Neill's first line in the episode is "Trees, trees and more trees. What a wonderful green universe we live in, eh?", a reference to the fact that most of the filming for other planets is done in Vancouver forests. This could also be due to the fact that the Goa'uld terraform many of the planets on which they put humans, making the planets look similar.
- It is worth noting that Trepanning was used historically as an effective relief for intracranial swelling resulting from brain trauma, as well as the somewhat less sound releasing evil spirits routine. Both contemporary accounts and signs of healing around the holes on skulls from the prehistoric to medieval periods suggest that the survival rate was, in fact, relatively high.
Jack with the wound through his left eyebrow.
- O'Neill gets a wound that cuts through his left eyebrow in this episode and is clearly seen with a wound there. In all subsequent episodes, he has a permanent scar cutting through his left eyebrow. The actor who plays him, Richard Dean Anderson, does not have such a scar. Anderson and make-up artist Jan Newman agreed the scar should be one of O'Neill's defining features.
- The scenes taking place around the Stargate on the Medieval planet were shot at the Mid-Valley Viewpoint of the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve. This location was previously used for the planet Gaia in "The Nox".
- This is Carl Binder's first and only solo contribution to Stargate SG-1 (He did contribute a segment to the episode "200"). He would later become a staff writer on the spin-off series Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate Universe. He would go on to write 32 episodes of the Stargate franchise.
- The screaming villager is played by director Peter DeLuise.
- Don S. Davis (Major General George S. Hammond) does not appear in this episode. After "Deadman Switch", this is the second episode in a row in which he does not appear. This was the only time that he was absent from two consecutive episodes prior to his departure from the regular cast at the end of Season 7.
- David McNally (Simon) previously played Hanno in the Stargate SG-1 episode "Cor-ai".
Goofs
- When Major Samantha Carter enters the coordinates of Earth, she enters the first one in advance. Then, when she continues, the film shows the second to fourth chevrons (correctly). But after the fourth one, we hear four more of the well-known dialing sounds.
- When discussing trepanning, Dr. Daniel Jackson states "Well they didn't call them the Dark Ages because it was dark." While this pejorative term is used in popular culture, historical scholars have recognized this as misleading about the era. In the rare instances of its use, it is neutral and refers only to the lack of historical records from the era.
- The "pre-Chaucer" form of Middle English on the stone early on in the episode seems in fact to be Early Modern English, which was spoken significantly later than the medieval period and Chaucer's lifetime. It is also said in the episode that the people on the planet have been living like this for "at least a thousand years", which means they could not logically be speaking Middle English anyway, as Middle English was only spoken from the late 12th century onwards, far less than thousand years before the events of the episode - before that, Old English was the language spoken in England.
- The episode falsely links many Early Modern (1500-1700) beliefs about demons and witchcraft – such as the Devil's mark – to the Medieval period (400-1400).
Other languages
- French: Les Démons (Demons)
- Italian: Demoni (Demons)
- Spanish: Demonios (Demons)
- Czech: Démoni (Demons)
- Hungarian: Démonok (Demons)
- German: Dämonen (Demons)
- Russian: Демоны (Demons)
- Japanese: 悪魔の生け贄 Akuma no Ikenie (Demon's Sacrifice)
- Demons at the Internet Movie Database
- Demons on GateWorld. (backup link)
- Demons on The Companion
- Demons article on Stargate SG-1 Solutions' The StargateWiki
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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Demons (Stargate SG-1). The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with SGCommand, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
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