The Changeling is episode 19 of season 6 of Stargate SG-1, first aired in 2002.
Teal'c is a firefighter, goes by T, and has nightmares in which he believes he's an alien carrying a serpent in his belly. With two realities bleeding into each other, there's no telling which is the dream. The truth is terrible: in the field, Teal'c is dying, sharing his symbiote with a dying Bra'tac, and his mind is escaping into an invented life.
Why it matters to the mythology
Teal'c loses his symbiote for good and switches to tretonin: the character's biology changes forever, and Daniel watches over him.
The review
The series' most experimental episode, a mental puzzle structured like a dream within a dream, and Christopher Judge, who wrote it, gives himself the best gift of all: playing a human, fragile, disoriented Teal'c. Daniel's appearances as a psychologist of the mind are beautifully gentle. That the solution is simply two dying men sharing a symbiote makes it all the more poignant: two warriors who refuse to let go of each other's hand. Bold and successful.
Written by Sebastian
Founder and editor-in-chief of Stargate Initiative
Gallery · 2
Stills from the episode, via TMDb.
The community watches the episode
Creators watch it, react to it, break it down. We're just the bridge: the views stay on their channels.
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