Pharrin

Officer Pharrin

Summary

Officer Pharrin was the commanding officer of the cryosleep ship Stromos from the planet Talthus in the episode, 7.06 "Lifeboat".

Character Biography

A dark star orbiting the Talthus sun would draw too close to the star. The resulting solar flares would engulf Talthus, destroying the planet. Therefore the people of Talthus built three ships to try and partially evacuate the planet before its destruction. Pharrin was an officer aboard one of the ships, the Stromos. The ships were not capable of faster-than-light travel, so the people of Talthus developed a cryogenic sleep process where their bodies were placed in a sleep state, while their consciousness was stored in a separate memory system to prevent extensive damage to their memories and intellect.

Pharrin had either a background in engineering or science because he understood many of the key systems of his ship, the Stromos. Because of his status as an officer of one of the ships, he was allowed to take one family member with him. At the urging of his wife, he chose their young son Keenin. His wife, unfortunately did not win a place on the ship with the planet wide lottery, so Pharrin was forced to leave her behind.

When securing the various passengers in the cryogenic sleep chambers, Pharrin ensured his son was comforted, promising that he would be there when Keenin awoke and that they would be in orbit around Ardena with the destruction of Talthus hundreds of years in the past. After Keenin was put to sleep, Pharrin and the crew ascertained the ship was accelerating properly past the range of the solar flares. His subordinate, Engineer Tryan, reported the compartment was secure, so Pharrin ordered him too to enter his cryogenic chamber.

At some point in the voyage, the Stromos, for unknown reasons, crash landed on P2A-237. As an automatic procedure, the ship revived Officer Pharrin. However, the resulting power drain was too great on the surrounding chambers, and despite Pharrin’s frantic efforts to divert power, the twelve passengers surrounding his cyro-sleep unit died. Desperate to salvage something of these last survivors of Talthus, Pharrin engineered a way past the various failsafes and dowloaded the consciousness of those passengers into his own mind. Pharrin was now host to the thoughts and memories of twelve other souls, and after a period of adjustment, appeared to survive as what he termed “a democracy of one.”

Pharrin sent out a distress signal to the other two ships, and he lived in hope of their eventual rescue. He explored the surrounding area outside the crash. The landscape of the planet was merely rocks, with no vegetation. There was not enough supplies on the ship to sustain another person, and besides, reviving even one other sleeper would create yet another power drain. As it was, power was failing anyway to all the sleep chambers. He was despairing when SG-1 arrived at the Stromos. Their MALP on the planet detected his distress signal.

The souls within Pharrin decided they must take immediate action to try and save the passengers of the Stromos. In desperation, Pharrin fired some type of stun weapon at SG-1, knocking them all unconscious. He first dragged Dr. Jackson to one of the chambers and downloaded the consciousness of twelve other cryo-sleepers into Daniel’s mind. Before he could repeat the process with the rest of SG-1, Teal’c awoke. Startled and frightened at Teal’c’s early recovery, Pharrin hid and watched Teal’c and SG-4 retrieve the rest of SG-1, including Daniel Jackson.

Pharrin was surprised when Major Carter and Teal’c returned to the ship. He tried to sneak up on them and stun them again, but this time the pair was prepared for an ambush and easily overpowered him. Frightened, Pharrin begged them not to hurt him. He hoped they had returned Daniel with them, and admitted he was responsible for Dr. Jackson’s condition. He could see no other way and hoped the others would agree to do the same. Power was failing throughout the ship by this point, and he did not know how many more souls he could accommodate. It was only then that Sam and Teal’c realized Pharrin was also hosting several personalities.

Instead, Major Carter offered to provide an alternate power source to bring up the Stromos energy reserves and also transport Pharrin’s people to another world, perhaps even Ardena through the Stargate. They would only agree to do this however, if Pharrin would return Daniel to his former state. Pharrin was tempted but could not at first agree, since the souls within Dr. Jackson were among the most precious of those onboard the Stromos, including the Sovereign Martice and Pharrin’s own son, Keenin. If he extracted them from Daniel’s mind, they may be lost forever. The souls within Pharrin had an argument amongst themselves before finally deciding to help SG-1.

Pharrin returned to the SGC with them and met with Daniel–whose body was then being controlled by his subordinate Tryan. He explained the situation to the engineer, who agreed to allow the transfer. Tryan was immediately supplanted by Martice who refused to allow it and demanded to be returned to the Stromos. Pharrin genuflected in submission to the man he swore an oath to protect, but was convinced by Colonel O'Neill's and Tryan’s entreaties that he must act to save all of his people. The next personality to emerge was Keenin, and with a broken heart, Pharrin had to tell his son he must sacrifice as well. He comforted his son with the idea that they would be together.

Pharrin and SG-1 returned to the planet with Dr. Fraiser. Because Daniel’s consciousness had retreated into himself at the constant assault by the other personalities, Pharrin was able to extract the others from his mind. Pharrin then had the twelve souls downloaded into his own mind, though Janet was unable to determine if all twelve were transferred.

Once other passengers were revived, Janet hoped with SG-4's help they would be able to revive and treat Pharrin and the other twenty-four souls he held in his mind.

Episodes

• 7.06 "Lifeboat"

Related Characters

• Col. Jack O'Neill
• Dr. Daniel Jackson
• Maj. Samantha Carter
• Teal'c
• Keenin
• Martice
• Tryan

Related Articles

• Ardena
• P2A-347
• SG-1
• SG-4
• SGC
• Stromos
• Talthus

Actor

• James Parks

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--DeeKayP 20:20, 12 Aug 2004 (PDT) --Char bio added Aurora Novarum 12:50 26 Nov 2005 (EST)