"If we dial out of our gate, or somebody offworld tries dialing in... Teal'c's energy signature will be erased. Permanently."
Maj. Samantha Carter
A stargate malfunction causes the wormhole to shut down while Teal'c is still en route to Earth, trapping his energy signature in the gate's "memory buffer", and the team is given just 48 hours to resolve the situation before normal operations resume and Teal'c is lost for good. While Carter works on the technical side of things, Daniel travels to Moscow along with Major Davis to negotiate for access to the Russian stargate, and O'Neill joins forces with Maybourne to investigate Colonel Simmons, who hints that he knows more than he's willing to share.
First appearance of Dr. Rodney McKay.
"48 Hours" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Ask a Stupid Question...:McKay: Is there lemon on the chicken?Server: ...It's lemon chicken.
- BFG: Teal'c uses a dismounted Death Glider cannon in the opening scene.
- Blackmail: Simmons attempts to blackmail Hammond into giving him a Goa'uld hand device in exchange for the information on how to get Teal'c out of the gate.
- Butt-Monkey: Siler gets electrocuted by the excess energy when they get the gate running again.
- Call-Back: O'Neill explains Teal'c disobeying orders to take down Tanith as a "Jaffa revenge thing".
- Character Name Alias:Maybourne: If you need me, I'm at the Accent Inn, checked in under the name of Cassidy.O'Neill: David or Sean?Maybourne: Butch.
- Continuity Nod:
- O'Neill tries to attack Maybourne when he first shows up, still believing him to be the one who shot him in "Desperate Measures". Later, the two pay a visit to the Goa'ulded Adrian Conrad, who was introduced in the same episode.
- Daniel reminds Chekov that SG-1 recently risked their lives to search for a Russian team.
- Deadly Euphemism: Maybourne offers to have Simmons "taken care of" or "make him disappear". It's not entirely clear whether he's joking or not.
- Dramatic Irony: O'Neill still thinks Maybourne shot him during "Desperate Measures", yet the audience knows it was actually Simmons.
- Fantastic Racism: Simmons states that numerous Americans have lost their lives going through the gate and questions how Hammond can care more for Teal'c than "one of their own".
- Insufferable Genius: McKay.
- In-Joke: Meta example. According
to Joseph Mallozzi, Rodney's iconic citrus allergy was one for the SG-1 creative team.Mallozzi: McKay’s citrus allergy was apparently inspired by a staff writer in the show’s early days (before my time anyway) who would always make it a point to proclaim his unique hypersensitivity to anyone who would listen. Whenever they’d go out for lunch, said writer would be very careful to clear all menu items with the server. “I’m very allergic to citrus,” he would inform them. “A single drop and I could die!” It wasn’t until the end of the season that they discovered the rib sauce their afflicted co-worker had so enjoyed on his bi-weekly lunches at a local rotisserie joint was, in fact, mostly molasses and lemon juice. And Rodney McKay's citrus allergy was born. - Jerkass Has a Point: Since it's long before his later Character Development set in, McKay is an unrepentant Jerkass in this episode, but he does have a point in that Carter's modifications to the dialing program have had disastrous consequences in the past.
- Not Me This Time: Maybourne insists to the enraged O'Neill that he wasn't the one who shot him back in "Desperate Measures". O'Neill doesn't believe him at first, but then later comes around and accepts it had to have been Simmons.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: The negotiations with the Russians start out this way, before they degenerate into outright aggression.
- Plot Tailored to the Party: The episode is structured in such a way that each main character — apart from Teal'c — has a job to do that plays to their key strengths; Carter works on the technological, science-y side of the equation by working on how to actually get Teal'c out of the gate's buffer, Daniel gets to handle the negotiations and political wrangling, and O'Neill once again teams up with Maybourne and puts his black ops training to good use in investigating the NID involvement.
- Precision F-Strike: The exchange between O'Neill and Maybourne starts with one:Maybourne: Hi, Jack!O'Neill: You rat bastard!
- Publicly Discussing the Secret: O'Neill and Maybourne have a fairly loud argument specifically mentioning the Goa'uld and O'Neill getting shot in the middle of a public parking lot. Maybourne even lampshades that they're in public as O'Neill chases him around the truck, O'Neill being too pissed off about the incident to care.
- A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: A downplayed variation when it's revealed Maybourne was the one who recruited Simmons for the NID. Based on Maybourne's tone when he warns Jack to beware his former recruit, it's clear Maybourne's feeling buyer's remorse about letting someone as corrupt and conniving as Simmons into the agency.
- Race Against the Clock: The team is given 48 hours to figure out how to get Teal'c back before they have to resume normal operations. It's later revealed that this deadline is based on McKay's research of the gate; he suspects that, based on the way the gate stores information, Teal'c pattern will degrade over time and 48 hours is the maximum amount of time before he's gone completely. Carter believes otherwise, and turns out to be right.
- Running Gag: Rodney's iconic citrus allergy, which debuts alongside him.
- Sniping the Cockpit: Teal'c does this with Tanith's al'kesh at the beginning of the episode. As he did it with a dismounted Death Glider cannon, this is like shooting the cockpit with a rocket launcher.
- Technician Versus Performer: The main difference in McKay's and Carter's approaches to tackling the problem; McKay puts his stock entirely in the theoretical principles of gate operation, while Carter is much more able to think outside of the box and come up with creative solutions.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Between Carter and McKay.
- Teleporter Accident: Tanith's al'kesh crashing into the DHD on the planet causes the wormhole to be terminated while Teal'c is still in transit, resulting in his energy signature getting trapped in the buffer.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: The Goa'uld tells this to O'Neill when the latter has him at gunpoint (zatpoint?} trying to play on O'Neill not wanting to harm the human host. O'Neill zats him anyway and tells him that since the host authorized kidnapping Carter and performing medical experiments on her, he didn't care if the host lived or died.
