Fragile Balance is episode 3 of season 7 of Stargate SG-1, first aired in 2003.
A fifteen-year-old boy shows up at the SGC swearing he's Jack O'Neill, and he knows things only the colonel could know. The truth is absurd: it really is Jack, made young again by a botched cloning experiment. The culprit is a rogue Asgard, Loki, who abducts humans at night to crack the secret of their genome... and the clone, for his part, refuses to disappear.
Why it matters to the mythology
O'Neill's teenage clone goes off to live his second adolescence: one of the walking spin-offs fans have asked for the most.
The review
The season's riskiest pitch, saved by a casting miracle: Michael Welch IS a scaled-down Richard Dean Anderson, expressions, sarcasm and timing included; it's uncanny. Along the way the episode treats itself to a brilliant explanation of UFO abductions, little gray men included, and the clone's exit, high school, motorcycle and a fresh start, carries an unexpected melancholy. Controlled madness from start to finish.
Written by Sebastian
Founder and editor-in-chief of Stargate Initiative
Gallery · 2
Stills from the episode, via TMDb.
The community watches the episode
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