With the Stargate program in danger of being terminated, the team is under pressure to find technology. Visiting a planet where they believe there is a creature that possesses the secret of invisibility, they encounter Apophis and his guards. Both sides receiving mortal wounds, they are aided by the planet's inhabitants, the Nox, a gentle people with a very large secret.

On their first visit to a new planet, SG-1 finds it subject to totally destructive volcanic activity and saves ten natives, the Tollan, a far more technologically advanced society. Their leader Omoc isn't grateful, nor interested in such a primitive race as the earthlings or any of the 'even more primitive' planets which are prepared to host them. Only one Tollan, Narim, shows an active interest in life on earth, especially in captain Samantha Carter and the cat Schrodinger she gives him, explaining his planet was destroyed after the Tollan supplied an unlimited energy source to a primitive neighboring planet which abused it for a cataclysmic weapon. Meanwhile, the White House authorized NID colonel Maybourne to take charge over the Tollan for military purposes, exactly Omoc's nightmare.

Colonel O'Neill awakens and is told by new staff everything in the SGC is different because he was just revived after 79 years of cryogenic hibernation, as sole survivor of a disastrous SG-1 mission on a Goa'uld-ruled planet. He accepts to undergo a 'high tech hypnosis' to retrieve information of use in the present war against them, which is going badly, involving earth's ten endangered colonies on other planets. However Major General Trofsky, the new base commander, and his female assistant tell Daniel and Sam, in different sections, that each of them is the sole survivor: it's all make-believe to probe their brains about the weaknesses of earth and the Alliance of the four races. Meanwhile, Teal'c awakes on earth, where it took Dr. Frasier months to save him from death; there was no trace of his teammates, and he resigns when General Hammond refuses permission to keep searching. O'Neill hears Goa'uld language, gets himself free and discovers he's on a fake SGC, frees Sam and Daniel, only to be stopped by the female Goa'uld system-lord Hathor, who employs both Horus and Serpent Jaffa and demands the humans' help against her rival system-lords.

The SG-1 team is requested by the Tollan to participate in a trial concerning Skaara and whether he or the Goa'uld parasite, Klorel, has control of his body.