In one of their first trips through the gate, SG-1 and SG-3 encounter a Bronze Age city that has become infested with a disease called, “the Touched.” When the teams accidentally carry the disease back to Stargate Command, suddenly a new alien threat poses a danger to all life on Earth.
The extreme precautions that Stargate Command takes to contain the Touched make total sense. For example, not only does General Hammond order Cheyenne Mountain under a lockdown, but even orders anyone trying to escape to be shot dead and cremated. Also, all Touched personnel are quarantined in cells to contain its spread (this proves arbitrary once the infection spreads beyond capacity, though). It’s shocking how easily such quarantine measures could go ignored in the real world; but thankfully, Stargate Command is much smarter, more disciplined, and more professional than that.
But not all of the SGC’s personnel seem to be vulnerable; for some reason some, such as Dr. Daniel Jackson, are immune. For example, Teal’c has Junior in his body giving him perfect plot armor and allowing him to have a larger hand in saving the day. Also among the immune is Dr. Janet Fraiser, who makes her debut in this episode. Introduced as a doctor who is committed to her job and does it efficiently, she already proves herself very rational, trustworthy, and dependable as Stargate Command’s chief medical officer. My only nitpick is that she wasn’t wearing gloves or a mask when interacting with the Touched, though I hold that more against the costuming department.
Back on the alien planet, SG-1 interacts with the healthy inhabitants, who call themselves “the Untouched.” Daniel mentions that their society takes after the ancient Minoans, and much of their culture is fleshed out very effectively with such a small handful of characters on one set. They carry over some ancient world cultural attitudes, such as how Daniel likens their treatment of their Touched to ancient Earth cultures’ stances toward leprosy, or how they value their blood as sacred and not to be tampered with. Attitudes like these humanize the Untouched as well-intentioned, but not having the right knowledge to correctly treat their own.
Also humanized are the Touched themselves, and this is handled very finely and effectively. At one point in the episode Col. Jack O’Neill becomes infected, and there are a couple of moment where a horribly infected Jack is talking to either Dr. Fraiser or Teal’c, as if he is still aware enough to look to them for help. It’s a subtle way of giving the infected more character rather than just blanketing them as caveman-like zombies.
The Touched is well-established as a very dangerous disease. Its symptoms, which mutate the human body into raging, violent, and beastlike, are literally in-your-face and easy to understand. These symptoms are also gradually revealed as the episode progresses. Not only does this make the disease a lot more horrifying, but it also still allows for some action-packed and dramatic conflict while mainly being an underlying antagonist. There is also a sense of plausibility with the cure for the Touched being a special antihistamine. That’s because the end revelation that the Touched feeds off the body’s histamine is quite believable science.
And on a side note, near the end there’s also a funny little tidbit where Teal’c doesn’t understand American pop cultural references just yet. Co-creator Jonathan Glassner, who wrote this episode, doesn’t seem to get enough credit for helping to pioneer the show’s humor. Especially here, he clearly knew how to lighten up the mood after a mostly dark and dire situation while keeping the tone consistent. Furthermore, this anecdote underlines how Teal’c, a Jaffa from Chulak, has yet to adapt to the culture of the Tau’ri.
When writing a series about people travelling from Earth to other planets, a smart writer would think it was only a matter of time before the spacefarers brought back some kind of deadly disease. Stargate SG-1 addressed that right away, in only its fifth episode. “The Broca Divide” was an early sign of Stargate SG-1 starting to come into its own, with a real threat that posed a danger to everyone and stripped down the main characters to their most vulnerable states. It’s a really, really great episode, a compelling piece of dramatic storytelling.
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