I'm a lot like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors when it comes to my SG-1 team and character moments: feed me, Seymour, feed me now! My reviews fall firmly within that context. Morpheus delivered very nicely, thank you. I came away with a pleasing sense of people and relationships that were beginning to fit together nicely, a team that was settling, bonding and mutually caring.

The scene at the beginning where Daniel once again awes (and slightly scares) his teammates with his intuitive genius was a hoot. Loved his pouncing energy and excitement at solving this particular killer archetypal mythological riddle and felt extremely satisfied with the suitably impressed reactions of SG-1 and Vala.

I did like the hints that Vala is in his space and in his face – she's clearly appointed herself his research assistant and he just as clearly believes in her despite the fact she grates on his last nerve. I had no difficulty in seeing Daniel as Vala's only advocate and it worked for me that he believes in her almost in the teeth of the evidence and struggled to articulate just why Landry should giver her a chance. I enjoyed him standing up for her in that scene with Landry and I liked the clear if gruff respect Landry showed Daniel in taking him at his word. Daniel felt strongly and he's proven worthy of Landry's trust and respect, so his word was good enough. Nice moment of validation there.

I do think that the research element, the solution of this particular killer archetypal mythological riddle was poorly handled by the writers. We had this great set-up to see the team working together to solve the mystery, then people started falling asleep, we were landed with a much more mundane mystery and it was Off To See The Lizard...

Meanwhile Daniel popped in and out of scene now and then.

That was very much a wasted opportunity, especially when he found a clue (off-screen) that led him to Atlantis! FINALLY! He got to tell us about it at the end, but I wanted to SEE it!

Still, there were nice, warm teamy moments for Daniel with Sam, Teal'c and Cameron and his interactions with Vala were, as always, sparkling with energy and chemistry. So far as Vala is concerned, he IS her Daniel. It shows. But Daniel isn't anyone's bitch – in fact, that tends to work the other way around. (Ask Jack) So there's this nicely simmering tension fizzing along and lifting all their scenes together. I love it!

Since I'm happily pro-Vala, her element of the story worked for me. I felt we made some headway in humanising her, as it were. Toning down some of her aggressively larger than life qualities with a nice mix of humour and pathos.

I think Vala has earned her chance to go through the gate and prove herself to SG-1. She did sacrifice herself to destroy the first supergate, she did risk her life and a horrific death to warn the SGC that the Ori were coming, and she did put herself in front of a staff blast to save Daniel. I think she's been mellowed somewhat by her relationships with two good if different men in Daniel and Tomin. Tomin was possibly the best in a long line of men she's been able to exploit through sex and affection, but Daniel is in a class of his own in her life. He literally is the only person to believe in her. Something in Vala is making her respond to that, keeping her anchored to the SGC and through it, to him.

Her attempts to ingratiate herself with Landry and SG-1, to insinuate herself into Daniel's niche and to make herself invaluable to him were pathetic, and I don't mean that in a mean-spirited way. We've never seen Vala anxious to please or to try to play by someone else's rules. As she herself said, she fights back. She refuses to be a victim of anyone's expectations. That was a good contrast to the attempts we saw her make to rise to Daniel's expectations.

As Sam once said, knowing Daniel is making Vala a better person.

That aside, as Adria's mother, she has a strong and pragmatic motivation to ally herself to the SGC as the only realistic defence against the Ori. She feels a moral imperative to help those enslaved by religious dogma and she has a personal imperative to try to save a man she cares for in Tomin and a daughter complicit with her enemy.

All of that is enough to make Vala work at the SGC and SG-1, perhaps more than she's worked at anything in her life.

I know she said at the end that she'd seen through Woolsey's attempt to recruit her as a fifth columnist, but I'd also like those hints of vulnerability and honest hurt to have played through in a moral objection to spying on Daniel and the team. I believed she was thoroughly humiliated and felt she didn't belong, didn't live up to what was wanted of her.

Vala was about as honest as she's been when she gave up on her psychological battle of wits with Hutchison and admitted she'd done bad things in the past and couldn't guarantee she wouldn't do them in the future.

The fact she does want to belong – with Daniel and with SG-1 – represents real character growth. Small steps, but steps nonetheless. She was quite deflated when she was brought into the SGC but excluded from SG-1.

I think she has a lot to offer. She too has a uniquely different perspective on life and experience through the Stargate and she, like Daniel, thinks outside the box.

And, she's damn funny! Especially when she's laying claim to her Daniel.

Once again, a pleasant sense of Cameron's competence and camaraderie with the team. He was funny without the buffoonery of latter Season 9. That line about the Texas salad bar made me laugh out loud.

I had the sense of a colonel being broken in, in lots of little ways. He's getting to know his teammates and that shows. I chuckled when he scooped Daniel up and pulled him into the gateroom mid-confrontation with Vala and later at his griping that it was Daniel's idea to march them into the dark nasty cave and Daniel was the only one to get out of it. He was also funny at the end of the episode, recounting his twenty minutes of cussing and noble self-sacrifice only to discover Teal'c had taken him at his word and buggered off with JoeBob right away.

The scene at the end where Landry welcomed Vala into the fold and Cameron warned her off, then relented and made nice because Daniel wanted him to gave me the warm fuzzies.

Cameron fit nicely into the team and nicely into the episode. I'm liking him a lot.

Some lovely Sam moments in this one. I'm a sucker for Sam and Daniel and loved how gently protective she was of him in this one. Big Sister Sam seems to be back in force, not just telling pouty Daniel what he knows he needs but doesn't want to do, but also in the lovely, loving shoulder stroke she gave him when they were both hitting bottom emotionally and physically. She was a pretty nice lady to be around and have around on this adventure. I enjoyed her.

I liked Sam being as baffled as everyone else by Daniel's eureka moment in the quest for the holy grail and laughed at her grumbling to Cameron that he thought she was hard to follow. Liked her wide smile when she realised Daniel had come through for them again.

As with Cameron, she was sensible and helpful, friendly and competent, and above all caring in this story. Much teamy goodness ensued.

Her expertise in alien autopsies does continue to baffle, though. I could see her as the one to hold the light for the doctor, squirt the parasite and generally be a pair of extra hands, but the doctor appeared to be assisting her and not the other way around. I believe I can state with confidence that even in television theoretical astrophysics, alien autopsy technique is not routinely taught.

Sam's description of her hallucination at the end was fascinating – her belief she was being shut into a coffin and buried alive. I could only wish we'd see the future impact of that trauma explored but it was, unfortunately, another throwaway line.

General observation: I do like those cute little moments of Teal'c's ongoing Cameron torture almost as much as the quiet caring he shows for Daniel and Sam. While he's a loving and consistent paternal presence in their lives, Cameron's this annoying itch Teal'c just has to scratch. Our Jaffa friend is seeing the funny side of life and it's great to be along for the ride, especially when he reaches out into the SGC community. I laughed out loud when he smacked that medtech upside the head and the guy protested he was awake.

It was fun when Cameron was bitching about the hike and Teal'c stuck up for Daniel. He's been broken in even longer than Jack has.

I prefer those episodes where everyone has a little something to do, and Teal'c's capture and retrieval of JoeBob, and his subsequent heroic ascent through the tunnels to save the day was cool. Teal'c is Da Man and it's always good when we get to see him in action. He has this tremendous will and commitment, and reminders of his inner strength are always welcome.

Never enough Teal'c.

I generally go fairly easy on poor plotting and pacing, but there were moments in Morpheus that had me gritting my teeth and wishing the writers had dared to take the road less travelled.

We really, really should have seen Daniel find the reference to Atlantis in the village archives. We should have seen Daniel's thrilled final realisation of a long-held dream battle the soporific effects of the parasite. His gradual, helpless surrender to that parasite would then have had some context and, dare we say, drama? To reduce that long-held dream (several seasons long) to a throwaway line at the end of the episode was inexcusably lazy.

I liked what we were shown of Vala's battle of wits with the psychologist and the polygraph. I enjoyed the humour and the pathos, but again with the gritting of the teeth. I'm not the only one wondering how she's feeling about being the mother of the murderous rampaging Ori leader. Shame that didn't come up in the in-depth psychological profiling.

I had no problem with the engineered sleeping sickness plot per se, but the whole going Off To See The Lizard made me wonder what the hell Morgan got up to, squatting in her cave. There was nothing there. I can understand the need to economise and re-use that well-used cave set, but damn, there should have been a cool Ancient lab there. Or at least some kind of Ancient dwelling. There had to be something back there. It was shielded, for cryin' out loud!

I was quite distracted by the lizard. Throwing little JoeBob into the mix allowed for some humour and some cute character moments for Cameron and Teal'c, which I'm down with, but it also threw me out of the story because the lizard was green when it should have been white, living underground, and what in the world was there for it to live on?

This one got a good from me because the team were good and fitting together nicely, but the plot was only fair to poor. This should have been about SG-1 and the killer mystery of Morgan La Fey, cracking the mythological code that leads them to Atlantis! Instead it was bugs (again) and JoeBob.

Morgan La Fey and JoeBob?

Should have been a no-brainer.