SG-1: Season Seven
First Aired: June 20, 2003
First Aired: June 20, 2003
A teenage boy shows up at the S.G.C. claiming to be Jack O’Neill, sending the team on a mission to uncover his true identity.
“Fragile Balance” Facts:
- Jack’s date of birth is given on his ID card as October 20, 1952 — though, strangely, not in the American date format of MM/DD/YY.
- In order to accentuate Jack O’Neill as a teenager, director Peter DeLuise asked the make-up department to emphasize actor Michael Welch’s acne, rather than covering it up.
- Up until now the Asgard have always been presented as a unified force of authority. Here, for the first time, we see a “bad” Asgard who is bucking the system: Loki (voiced by DeLuise).
- Loki’s goal is to use human beings to help solve the Asgard’s fatal cloning problem, which was revealed in Season Five’s “Revelation” and led to the Asgard’s (alleged) extinction in “Unending.”
- The original story idea was to use not Loki but as antagonistic Asgard named Odin, who effectively would be half-human.
- This is the first episode of Stargate ever to close with a musical number. It’s “Who Am I,” performed by Lily Frost.
- “Young Jack” was such a hit with fans and producers alike that the show’s writers intended to bring him back for another episode. Alas, the proper story idea never materialized. (Welch also got busy with two seasons of Joan of Arcadia right after Stargate.
“Fragile Balance” on GateWorld:
- Episode Guide
- Episode Review
- Episode Transcript
- Photo Gallery
- Screencap Gallery
- Discussion Thread
- Season Seven Podcast
- Interview with Michael Welch (2004)
Download “Fragile Balance” now from Amazon
Rewatch “Fragile Balance” this week! Then post your comments below, or head over to the “Fragile Balance” discussion thread and see what people were saying back in the day. What are your favorite moments?
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Great episode Welch, did a amazing job with showing the same mannerisms that RDA shows with O’Neill.
Some of the expressions and the way the lines are delivered is very “O’Neill”
there were fun scenes in the ep, and michael welch did an awesome job, but… i don’t think young jack clone should have lived. i found the ending scene, with our jack dropping off the clone jack at high school… very creepy! this is a 50 something man stuck in a teenage body, eying young girls with a lecherous grin. yes, it was a joke, but truth be told, clone jack would be SO alienated by being *stuck* in this young body… he’d have all the memories of his family, his son, his friends and teammates… i feel the writer(s)… Read more »
@majorsal I didn’t find it would be a prison sentence i thought it would actually be the opposite a sense of freedom. Young Jack has all of the memories of course but it would be a chance to take a different path. He had in his mind given the air force many years of service and this was his opportunity to go back and maybe take up his passion for fishing and boating. Turn it into a career instead of the military. He had retired once now he has retired again but without any thing to hold him back, no… Read more »
I had forgot about this episode. The young actor did such a great job mimicking the original Jack ONeill. I just finished watching it and was thinking what a shock it would be for the young ONeill to have his life turned upside down and have to start all over all the while remembering his past life. Such a great episode.