Season 8 Episode 13 – It's Good To Be King

Episode summary: While trying to rescue Harry Maybourne from an impending goa'uld invasion, SG-1 finds an Ancient ship – a puddle jumper – which contains a time machine. Because it's an Ancient ship, they need Jack to fly it, so he joins them off-world. Sam repairs the ship and Jack gets it airborne. He destroys the goa'uld Ares' mothership, and they thwart the invasion, saving Maybourne's planet. Maybourne elects to stay where he is – as king of the natives. It isn't specified in the episode, but we later learn that unsurprisingly SG-1 took the Ancient time ship back to Earth with them.

"Easy … a little to the left …"

"Carter, be quiet, would you? I know what I'm doing."

Sam shut her mouth with a harried look, and watched the wall of the shaft Jack was flying the ship up through, flinching when he closed to within an inch.

"I've got it." He assured her.

"You're doing great, sir."

"How much further up?"

Sam peered out of the front window. "A couple more floors. They've knocked through the shaft wall so you should be able to just fly the ship straight in."

"What was that room before?"

"Storage, I think." She hadn't had a chance to look at the base schematics herself yet, but the idea as it had been communicated to her over the radio was that they would, having flown the time ship through the gate, fly it directly up the missile shaft above the gate and land in a room several stories up, which would be accessible via the newly removed wall connecting the room with the shaft.

"There." She said, as the room came into view. There was a plethora of technicians inside the room, and Jack waved irritatedly at them to move.

"They need get out of the way, I'm gonna end up landing on top of one of them."

"Clear the room." Sam said into her radio. They quit trying to act as air traffic controllers and scuttled for the door, leaving Jack space to fly into the confined space.

"And … we're down." He said, as the ship settled to the ground with a bone-rattling thud.

"Well done sir." She said with a relieved smile.

He patted his thighs with a satisfied look. "It handles pretty well, considering it has the aerodynamic properties of a brick."

"I expect the Ancient technology has something to do with that." Sam commented.

"Speaking of which … we have a time travel device." Jack said, with a mischievous glint in his eye.

"No." Sam shut that idea down immediately.

"Aw, come on …"

"Sir, no. We can't use it. We've had enough trouble keeping the timeline on track without risking it further by using this."

There was a muffled banging sound as the technicians knocked on the ship's back door. Jack ignored them.

"Don't you wanna just see? We could skip ahead to, say, 2015. The kids would be little."

Sam smiled despite herself at the image. "Even if we could fly the ship out of the mountain undetected – which would be completely impossible – just by being in that time period we would risk doing irreparable damage to the timeline. I'm sorry, I want to see them as much as you do, but we have to just wait and get there the old fashioned way, one day at a time."

The banging was getting more insistent now, and a couple of technicians were waving at them through the front window.

Jack sighed grumpily. "Fine. I won't play with our new toy. Spoilsport."

Sam rolled her eyes and got up to open the door for the technicians.

"Don't touch the time device." Sam ordered them as they swarmed in.

"Don't touch anything." Jack corrected, following her out. "No one lays hands on this thing until Carter's had a good look at it."

She smirked at the expressions of dismay on the technicians' faces.

They headed out, looking for an elevator to take them back down to the control room level.

"You know, this does raise a question." Jack said as they walked.

"Sir?"

"Why didn't they have this thing in 2034?"

Sam thought about it. "The imposter impersonating my older self – General Carter – said she didn't have a clue how to send us back in time."

"Meaning either she didn't know about this ship, or she didn't have it."

"She did years of research before replacing the General, I can't believe she wouldn't have known about it." Sam said as they arrived at an elevator, and she swiped her ID card to call it.

"Right, so … where did it go?"

Sam raised her eyebrows, looking at him as they waited for the elevator to arrive. "I guess we'll have to wait to find out."