O'Neill doesn't buy it, and presses Hammond for the real truth. But the general refuses todiscuss the matter further, and departs the SGC. He is replaced by Major General Bauer, ahard-nosed bureaucrat from the Pentagon. Bauer seems to take little interest in the men andwomen of the SGC, hardly looking at them as he passes them by at his arrival.

Days go by, and Bauer's new policies are put in place. He breaks up SG-1, assigning Teal'cto SG-3 and giving Daniel a desk job. Sam is assigned to participate in a project developing a naquaada-enhanced nuclear bomb. Jack is quickly fed up, and confronts the newcommanding officer with his usual level of tact and insubordination.

Soon after, O'Neill visits the newly retired General Hammond, and finds Hammond's two granddaughters playing in the backyard. Jack pushes the general for the truth behind hissurprise retirement, and finally gets it: two weeks ago he received a phone call from the NID, telling him to get his act together. The Stargate, they believe, must be used to acquire advanced technology by any means necessary.

Hammond flatly refused. The next day, two men dressed in plain clothes picked up hisgranddaughters from school. The kids weren't hurt -- the men just drove them around the block a few times and dropped them off. But Hammond got the message, he tells Jack.

Having a connection to only one former member of the NID (a top secret government organization philosophically at odds with the SGC), O'Neill decides to do whatever it takesto get Hammond's job back. He pays a visit to HarryMaybourne, now under lock and key after being convicted of treason. Maybourne is awaiting the death sentence.

He doesn't seem to know anything about the effort to blackmail Hammond, but he does know how to get hard evidence to hold over the heads of those responsible. Against his betterjudgment, O'Neill pulls every string he's got (mainly in the form of a call to the president) and gets permission to take Maybourne out of prison for a few days. The twoproceed to one of Maybourne's personal hideouts.

Back at the SGC, General Bauer is making a mess of things. One officer is dead in a missionto retrieve refined naquaada for the bomb's testing. And when Carter helps to finish theproject, she is informed about the plans to test it offworld. She raises serious concernswhen Bauer tells her that the planet supports plant and animal life, and that the Stargatewill remain connected to the planet during the detonation.

What's more, there are traces of naquaada in the soil of the planet. Unbeknownst to Carter,this was the general's intention all along -- to create a naquaada chain reaction that could destroy the entire surface of a Goa'uld planet (since many Goa'uld worlds are rich in the mineral). Causing such a chain reaction with the gate still open could have disastrousconsequences, especially if the gate is not destroyed by the blast. Bauer refuses to listento Sam.

Pursued by the NID, O'Neill and Maybourne fail to access the NID computer network, wherethey can find data linking key individuals to the blackmail of Hammond, plus other illegalNID actions. They visit the home of Senator Kinsey, who Maybourne knows to be connected tothe organization. Jack holds the senator at gunpoint, while Maybourne uses Kinsey's computer to access the NID files.

Bauer's detonation goes forward, but the blast does not disconnect the wormhole as predicted. Though the iris is quickly closed, radiation begins to pour into the base. Stunned, Bauer orders an evacuation of the mountain. Sam reminds him that the gate may still shut itself off once the 38-minute window has expired (the maximum amount of time a wormhole can be maintained); they monitor the gate from a station on an upper level, and are relieved when the Stargate disconnects. Bauer apologizes to Sam, realizing that his grossnegligence almost devestated the planet.

With hard evidence of Kinsey's involvement in the blackmailing of General Hammond, and in Maybourne's covert actions offworld ("Shades of Grey"), and insupporting the Russian Stargate program ("Watergate"), Jack demandsthat Kinsey get Hammond reinstated. Soon after, the general makes his triumphant return tothe SGC.

As for Maybourne -- Kinsey arranged to have him transferred to a nicer prison facility. Shortly thereafter, the colonel escaped. The fugitive Maybourne contacted O'Neill afterward to thank him; he is now enjoying himself in a tropical paradise, far from his death sentence.

After a number of days in retirement, George Hammond is back in charge at Cheyenne Mountain. He owes a great debt to Colonel O'Neill, who requested only that he continue to grant him leniency and patience. O'Neill also revealed a lot about Hammond's personality: he's good at what he does, and he loves it. He told Hammond that he would never be convinced that the general left the Stargate program because he lost his taste for it.

Hammond is a two-star general.

Jack O'Neill - O'Neill risked his career and his freedom to go one-on-one against the NID, in order to save General Hammond's job. He's not just a good commanding officer -- Jack considers him a friend. He's also a familiar friend of the general's family (Hammond's granddaughters addressed Jack by his first name, and greeted him with enthusiastic hugs).

O'Neill showed just how far he was willing to go for his friend, holding a United States senator at gunpoint in order to acquire evidence of Kinsey's illegal activities. Jack has retained this information, in order to have the necessary leverage with Kinsey and the NID.

O'Neill has quite a bit of pull with the president of the United States, probably due to the number of times he and his team have save the world. He was able to get the president to grant permission for him to take a convicted traitor on a personal fact-finding expedition.

Jack also nicely expressed the reason he came out of retirement (twice), and why he continues to risk life and limb in support of the Stargate program: "Some things are worth changing your plans for."

Colonel Maybourne - Maybourne was arrested after the events of "Watergate", and convicted of treason. He was awaiting the death sentence in a federal penitentiary when Jack O'Neill found him, and convinced the president to let him out for a few days. After Maybourne helped O'Neill acquire evidence against his former NID associates, Maybourne blackmailed Kinsey into transferring him to a nicer facility -- and escaped soon after. He is currently at large, though all his ties with the NID are severed (save the possibility of blackmailing Kinsey).

Maybourne has many aliases (a hundred, if one is to believe the man himself), one of which is "Charles Bliss." He said that he and Senator Kinsey "go way back," perhaps implying a connection between Maybourne and the NID and Kinsey's attempt to shut down the Stargate program two and a half years ago ("Politics").

Samantha Carter - Carter continued to follow orders and obey the chain of command, despite her objections to Bauer's naquaada bomb project and her belief that the test would have disastrous consequences. She was proved right, of course, when all of Cheyenne Mountain was nearly destroyed.

Sam expressed her disagreement with General Bauer much more directly than she has done in the past. (Perhaps some of Jack's insubordinate nature has rubbed off on her.) But in spite of Bauer's collossal foolishness, she did not cross the line. She did her duty and stuck around, perhaps because she knew that she'd be the person with the best chance of getting the SGC out of whatever mess Bauer was creating.

Teal'c - Surprisingly, Teal'c showed a willingness (though perhaps temporary) to remain a part of the SGC when he was reassigned to SG-3 after Hammond retired. He even obeyed Bauer's orders to participate in a mission to a heavily-guarded Goa'uld world to obtain a naquaada sample for a risky experiment. Teal'c saw the life of one SGC officer lost in that mission.

His willingness to stick around may have resulted from the changing dynamic on his home planet of Chu'lak: the planet has been decimated by Apophis ("Maternal Instinct"), and recently Teal'c was betrayed and captured there by a fellow Jaffa ("The Serpent's Venom").