Gaaaaah! I so wanted to be able to come on after watching "Resurrection" raving that it was brilliant... but I can't! This was Amanda Tapping's first shot at directing, and I was a little disappointed, to be honest- not because of the direction though. I really did like the style Amanda went for- it was actually reminiscent of some of the better X-Files eps (and as I'm also a huge fan of the early X-Files, 'tis high praise indeed, lol), running around in the dark, intrigue etc- especially near the end. I loved the location they used too- very dark and dank, totally fitting locale for a rogue NID cell to set themselves up in.

It was very cool watching the opening shot, having been told how it was done. How the steadycam guy didn't fall on his butt as he got back on the crane is beyond me, hat's off to the guy. The way that shot went up into the rafters of the warehouse to reveal all those body bags was very nice- it set the scope of the atrocity very well, I found myself thinking "woah... what have they let loose?". I also liked one of the early scenes between Sam and Agent Barret, when he tried to ask her out to dinner- "Actually, I'm seeing someone." "Seeing someone?? You??" I certainly chuckled at that. I liked the fact that Anna was using very dark terrifying imagery in her drawings, letting us see that her mind obviously had a fractured darkness to it..... her somewhat childlike attitude was very like the alien in "Species"..... just following her nature, as it were, and demonstrated wonderfully that she simply hadn't been alive for very long, so really didn't have the emotional equipment required to process the stuff she was seeing in her head.

What let it down? The script. The ep just didn't have that "spark". Sekhmet was mentioned, but there was no mention of the fact that Sekhmet in Egyption mythology was actually another aspect of Hathor who, in the form of a lioness, set about destroying humanity at Ra's command because he had learned they were plotting against him, and that he had to get her peshed before she'd stop killing people- and this is exactly the kind of thing Daniel normally enthusiatically shares whether the others want or need to hear about it. The guy who played Keffler was bit overdone to be honest- the chappie seemed to be simply trying too hard to appear smug and slimey. SG-1 spent no time at all together working on the various problems, either, which was VERY odd. I would have expected Sam to be down there working on the bomb, or helping Daniel, in other words, the whole lot of them working as a team. Instead, she's sequestered away faffing about with computer research records or grilling the creepy scientist- it just didn't ring true! Theres a ten pound naquada bomb in the basement, wouldn't it have been more believable for Sam to swiftly download the info from the lab computers then hightail it down to join Teal'c.... allowing both of them to take off after the goa'uld/human mutant blendy thing together once the bomb was dealt with?

Something that was also obvious was the glaring lack of humour. None at all hardly, possibly because of the almost total lack of interaction between the various members of SG-1.... fair goes, serious subject matter, but come on! The Alien Resurrection-esque biolab was a nice touch... would perhaps have been nice to see some human/goa'uld mutant monstrosities though, with features apparent from both species, would have really made you hate Keffler more. I was somewhat glad he got his comuppance, but if there had been more visual evidence of his horrible conscienceless nature, it would have had more impact.

The more I think about it, I'd say Amanda produced the best that was possible from that script. I'm guessing that Micheal wrote it including O'Neill, then had to modify it to leave him out. If that was the case, it would explain the lack of humour- lets face it, O'Neill gets all the fun lines!

All in all, it was pretty good, but could definately done with more humour. Maybe I was just spoilt rotten by the roller coaster ride of the last couple of weeks episodes, lol.

What do the rest of you guys think?

Kel