8.15 "Citizen Joe" Episode Guide
Précis
Seven years ago, Joe—a happily married middle-class father—picked up an odd-looking stone marked with strange glyphs at a garage sale. Ever since, he has been seeing visions of a top-secret Air Force unit commanded by Jack O'Neill, who leads the SG-1 team through an ancient portal called the Stargate. Joe's obsession with SG-1 ruins his life - and he's out for revenge.
Guide | Transcript
SciFi.com Official Summary
General Jack O'Neill finds an uninvited visitor in his home. Wielding a pistol (which is aimed at O'Neill's chest), Joe Spencer, a barber from Indiana, accuses O'Neill of ruining his life.
Seven years ago, Joe bought an attractively carved stone at a garage sale, from a man whose grandfather found it on an archeological dig in Egypt. Joe picked it up and immediately began having vivid, virtual experiences of traveling through the stargate and being in the field with SG-1—living their adventures.
Joe started telling his stories to his kids, his neighbors and his customers. Everyone in town soon heard of Col. O'Neill and Stargate Command. They've heard about the downfall of the System Lord Apophis and the rise of Anubis; the threat of the Goa'uld; SGC's alliances with the Asgard, the Jaffa and the Tok'ra; Daniel Jackson's death, ascension and return to Earth; and countless other adventures.
As the stories continued, Joe's wife, Charlene, suggested he write them down. He sent them to more than 300 publishers and was rejected by every one. He called the Air Force in an effort to contact O'Neill directly, but he was stonewalled. He wrote dozens of letters but got no replies.
Over the years, Joe's unrelenting obsession with the stone and with O'Neill's career (which he has followed through the news), and his insistence that his visions were really happening somewhere, drove away his customers ... and his wife.
Now, seven years after acquiring the stone, Joe's barbershop is out of business. His home has been foreclosed on. He has nothing left to lose—and his desperation has brought him here, to O'Neill's house.
O'Neill knows that Joe's gun is just a toy and calls his bluff. Before O'Neill calls the men in the white coats, however, Joe dazzles him by telling him that he knows about O'Neill's promotion to brigadier general; that O'Neill is head of Stargate Command at Cheyenne Mountain; that O'Neill used to command SG-1, which is now led by Lt. Col. Samantha Carter; that he has had the entire repository of the Ancients' knowledge downloaded into his brain—twice. Joe also knows about the Ancient weapon in Antarctica and O'Neill's affinities for fishing, the Simpsons, Mary Steenburgen, and the color peridot, and that he's terrible at ping pong….
All Joe really wants to know is that he's not crazy.
O'Neill takes Joe to Cheyenne Mountain. Carter discovers that Joe has the same Ancient gene as O'Neill, which is how Joe activated the stone. Daniel finds the stone's twin in his lab. It was brought back from P3R-233 seven years ago. O'Neill touched it while Daniel was cataloging the artifacts, thereby activating it. The stones are a kind of long-range communication device; they enable people to perceive events remotely, even across interstellar distances, via a psychic connection.
After the stones were activated, a link was established. While O'Neill was writing up his mission reports, the SGC stone (in storage, several floors above him) transmitted his memories to Joe in Indiana. Finally, O'Neill makes a revelation of his own: He's been vicariously living Joe's mundane, small-town life through the same psychic connection ... and he has found it quite relaxing.
Joe meets with Charlene, who is suing him for divorce. Joining them is General Jack O'Neill, in full dress uniform. The general has a few things to tell Charlene that, he says, just might change her mind about leaving Joe.
Cast
- Richard Dean Anderson as Brig. Gen. Jack O'Neill
- Amanda Tapping as Lt. Col. Samantha Carter
- Christopher Judge as Teal'c
- and Michael Shanks as Dr. Daniel Jackson
Guest Stars
- Dan Castellaneta as Joe Spencer
- Deborah Theaker as Charlene Spencer
- Alex Ferris as Young Andy Spencer
- Mark Hansen as Older Andy Spencer
- Louis Chirillo as Bert Simmons
- Chad Krowchuk as Gordie Lowe
- Eric Keenleyside as Fred
- Andy Thompson as Calvin
- Beatrice Zeilinger as Cindy Simmons
Production
- Story by Robert C. Cooper
- Teleplay by Damian Kindler
- Directed by Andy Mikita
Related Articles
Keywords
- Ancient Communications Stone
- Ancient Gene
- Ancients
- Antarctic Outpost
- Anubis
- Apophis
- Ascended Beings
- Asgard
- Goa'uld
- Jaffa
- P3R-233
- Repository of Knowledge
- SG-1
- Stargate Command (SGC)
- Stargate Command (SGC) Base
- Tok'ra
Other
- Season Eight Episode Guides
- Episode Guides
- Transcripts
- 8.15 "Citizen Joe" Transcript
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- Next: 8.16 "Reckoning Part 1" Episode Guide
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- Stargate Screencaps: Season Eight
--DeeKayP 20:12, 2 Feb 2005 (PST)