There is a specific episode I come back to every few years and it lands harder each time. "The Shrine" is not a fan favourite in the action-sequence sense. There are no gate addresses dialled, no firefights, no Ancient devices activated. It is forty-three minutes of two men sitting by a lake while one of them slowly forgets who he is.

What Happens

Rodney McKay contracts Second Childhood, a degenerative neurological condition accelerated by a parasite. By the midpoint he cannot remember Zelenka. By the end he cannot remember Sheppard. David Hewlett plays the regression without a single false beat, and Joe Flanigan matches him in the quiet scenes in a way he was rarely allowed to elsewhere in the run. The moment Rodney looks at John and says "I know you" without being able to say why is one of the cleanest pieces of acting this franchise ever captured on camera.

Why It Works

What "The Shrine" does that almost no other episode in the franchise attempts is treat the ensemble as people with a history rather than archetypes with a function. Ronon carries Rodney on his back up a mountain because that is what Ronon would do. Teyla organises logistics because that is what Teyla does. The character work is load-bearing, not decorative.

The Argument

If you think I am wrong, say so. If you have a competing argument for something from SG-1 or SGU that goes harder, I want to hear it.

And yes, this is exactly the kind of story that a live franchise could still tell. #SaveStargate.

Janus