Stargate SG-1, Season 2, Episode 10

"Bane"

images used above are courtesy of Gateworld and MGM

Overall Rating: Fair

While SG-1 is investigating a planet, Teal'c is stung by a gi-normous alien insect.  Teal'c's symbiote cannot overcome the insect's venom.  Changes begin to happen to Teal'c on a cellular level.  Colonel Maybourne (last seen in the episode "Enigma") arrives at SGC with orders to take Teal'c away in order to help to study him.  SG-1 and General Hammond are not happy about this, but orders are orders.  Teal'c escapes from Maybourne.  It is a race between SG-1 and Colonel Maybourne to find Teal'c.  Meanwhile, there is a Jaffa, with a Goa'uld symbiote in his belly pouch, wandering around a city, and he is changing into a life form that could take over the world.

An exciting premise for a tepid episode which lacks suspense.  A story about Earth's civilizations possibly being destroyed by a space bug could be interesting.  However, the episode devolves into a retelling of the scene in the movie Frankenstein, where the monster comes across a young child who is too naive to realize the danger.  Teal'c is the monster.  The young child becomes a spunky 'tween in a desolate urban landscape.

Tom McBeath returns as Colonel Maybourne, and stays true to the character.  There is not any atrociously bad acting in this episode, just a lot of okay performances.  Not a lot of sharp dialog as a reprieve from a dull story, but nothing dreadful.

Failures:
It is never good when there is only one easy to attain, simple to ascertain, solution to a story's particular plot crisis.  Will Teal'c kill the girl?  No.  Will the alien insect be stopped from causing the destruction of Earth's civilizations?  Yes.