Teal'c is on his home planet, Chulak, where there is rebellion among the Jaffa warriors. He is betrayed as a sacrilegious shol'va (traitor) by Rak'nor, son of a Jaffa friend of his father, and handed to Terok, the torturer of system lord Heru'ur. Ignorant of his fate, the other SG-1 members join Jacob in a risky attempt to take hold of a space mine using a Tok'ra ship piloted by Jacob. En route to Apophis' spaceship, the expedition finds out that Teal'c is being offered as a confidence-building present from Heru'ur to cement an alliance with Apophis against the other system lords, which would make the Goa'uld threat more dangerous than ever. They decide to save Teal'c, but their attempt fails. However, Teal'c's resistance to torture and clear conviction that Goa'uld are not gods finally convinces Rak'nor, who now bravely acts.

A new leader has risen among the Free Jaffa, K'tano, former First Prime of Imhotep. SG-1, accompanied by Bra'tac, seeks an alliance between the Tau'ri and the large force he has amassed.

The Tok'ra are forced to evacuate their newly established base under attack from the Goa'uld. They flee to the SGC's Alpha site. Tensions rise between the allied factions, the Free Jaffa, Tau'ri, and Tok'ra. Jacob and Selmak feel the end of the Tok'ra is near and Sam finds a Naquadah generator has been sabotaged to function as a bomb. Jack suspects the recently arrived Tok'ra and attempts to weed out the traitor.

In a firefight with Jaffa, Teal'c takes a staff blast to the gut. Without his symbiote, he cannot regenerate as he once did. Daniel feels that he cannot remember something important, so he goes searching through the logs for any sign of his lost knowledge. Teal'c expresses his feelings that the Tritonin has made him weak.

With a new commander of the SGC comes a new leader of SG-1, Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell, a former fighter pilot who flew an F-302 in the battle over Antarctica. However, he is deterred by the fact that all the other members of SG-1 are leaving for other ventures: Teal'c to manage the Jaffa Nation, Carter to Area 51 for alien R&D, and Dr. Jackson to Atlantis as an Ancient expert. Mitchell endeavors to keep the members of SG-1 for himself, but they are increasingly tough to convince.

Upon finding Merlin's testing grounds, Dr. Jackson, Teal'c, Col. Mitchell, and Vala uncover the hidden treasure including a book that tells the story of the Ancients coming to Earth from another galaxy and a strange alien device.