A solar flare causes the gate to malfunction and strand the team in 1969, where they receive help from past versions of General—or rather, Lieutenant Hammond—and Catherine Langford, as well as a couple of New Age Retro Hippies, as they try to figure out how to get back home.
"1969" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Accidental Time Travel: The first instance of a solar flare causing time travel in the 'verse.
- Bilingual Dialogue: Daniel and Catherine briefly converse in German, as Daniel is pretending to be a German scientist so as to avoid giving away his true identity before she's "supposed" to meet him.
- Bluff the Impostor: The guards who find the team after they first arrive in 1969 do this by asking in Russian if they're Soviet spies. Daniel being Daniel instinctively replies in Russian, which doesn't exactly help their case.Guard: [in Russian] Are you Soviet spies?Daniel: Nyet!O'Neill:...Daniel?Daniel: What? He just asked if we were Soviet spies, I was just... [looks down]
- Brick Joke: After escaping from the military truck, Jack swipes some money from Lt. Hammond and promises to pay him back, with interest. Back in the present, Gen. Hammond reminds him of the debt which, with interest, is around $500.
- Character Name Alias: Jack tells his interrogator that his name is Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Shortly thereafter, he confesses that his name isn't Kirk. It's Luke Skywalker.
- Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: Used as a gag. O'Neill borrows some cash from 1969 Hammond and promises to pay him back with interest. Upon their return, Hammond tells O'Neill that it works out to about $500.
- Cutting the Knot: SG-1 emerges into the bottom of a rocket test chamber, only to hear a PA announcement that the rocket will ignite in 20 seconds. Jack, Carter, and Daniel all panic and start yelling, banging on the doors, and trying to find an abort switch. Teal'c calmly waits till the last second and then shoots the rocket engine with his zat. Naturally, the rocket fails to ignite. And again, later in the episode, after several cars pass without stopping for Carter, Teal'c simply walks out into the middle of the road to force a vehicle to stop.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Solar flare time travel will never work again as it is presented here, with the stargate dropping someone anywhere it likes and then just up and vanishing afterwards.
- Hippie Van: The team's method of transport in 1969.
- Hitchhiker's Leg: O'Neill has Carter try to get someone to pull over; she doesn't show any leg, but O'Neill does insist that she go out and do it alone. This is subverted, however, in that it doesn't work. Teal'c decides that "This method is ineffective" and gets a ride by walking out into the middle of the road in front of a van.
- I'm Mr. [Future Pop Culture Reference]: Jack claims that his name is Luke Skywalker.
- Implausible Deniability: Jack once provided the page quote.Thornbird: I'm Major Robert Thornbird, and you are?
O'Neill: Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise.
Thornbird: Your dog tags say otherwise.
O'Neill: They're lying. - Innocuously Important Episode: "1969" marks the formal introduction of Time Travel to Stargate (opening the door for Atlantis and Universe to later do their own Time Travel stories during their runs). The Time Travel-by-Solar-Flare method will also be utilized on multiple occasions throughout the franchise.
- Keep It Foreign: Obviously, Daniel pretending to be German wouldn't work in the German dub, so it has him pretending to be French instead.
- The '60s: The episode manages to cover most of the popularly remembered elements of the decade without veering too far into Popular History. We get a backdrop of Cold War spy intrigue at Cheyenne Mountain followed by a hippie road trip, not to mention references to The Vietnam War, The Space Race, Woodstock, Richard Nixon and the murder of Sharon Tate.
- Stable Time Loop: After seeing the injury on Carter's wrist, Hammond realized this was the trip that would take SG-1 into the past and gave her the note to his past self. Interestingly, Hammond later admitted that he considered not letting them go on the mission that brought them to the past.
- Timeshifted Actor:
- Glynis Davies plays the middle-aged Catherine Langford of 1969. For those counting, this is the fifth actress to have played Catherine in the franchise, the preceding four consisting of Viveca Lindfors for the movie, Elizabeth Hoffman for the series, and two more time-shifted actresses playing her in flashbacks to 1928 (for the movie) and 1945 (for "The Torment of Tantalus"). Yet another actress portrays her in the prequel Stargate Origins, set around 1939. She later dies offscreen in "Moebius Part 1".
- Aaron Pearl as the young Lieutenant Hammond.
- Pamela Perry as the old Cassandra.
- Time-Travelers Are Spies: SG-1 are mistaken for Soviet agents.
- Title by Year: A solar flare causes the gate to malfunction and strand the team in 1969.
- Travel Montage: Jenny and Michael driving the team across the country is represented by a red line on a map.
- Underage Casting: Daniel mentions that on the date in 1969 they are visiting, he would have been roughly four-and-a-half years old, while his actor was not born until 1970. This makes all of his expertise and the qualifications he had gained before joining the SGC slightly more plausible, but only slightly.
