US Air Date: 19/10/2007

Writer: Robert C Cooper

Director: Robert C Cooper

Sheppard and his team gate to a jungle planet, and are about to leave despite McKay’s vociferous (and actually fairly pertinent) protests about hardly scraping the surface of what the world has to offer. As the scientist is overridden, they discover what looks to be a crystal growing on the side of a tree that generates energy. Inexplicably drawn to look into its light, Sheppard is suddenly thrown back when he gets too close, resulting in an immediate withdrawal to Atlantis where Dr Keller clears him.
Later that night, Teyla is having a dream where Sheppard, who resembles his part-transformation into an Iratus bug, attacks her. She speaks to Dr Heightmeyer, and reveals that she now feels irrationally uncomfortable around him. She tells Ronon and McKay about the dream, but when the Colonel shows up, she leaves. Later on, Keller has a dream about a facehugger exploding from Teyla’s chest, while Sheppard looks on approvingly.
Ronon comes to the infirmary and falls asleep while having stitches and another dream ensues with John as the antagonist. Things begin to heat up as a marine sleepwalks and holds Sheppard at gunpoint, while the threat becomes very real when Heightmeyer dies in the real world after another dream where he kills her.
Eventually, they realise that the crystal contained an entity controlling them through sleep. They determine that it is inside McKay, but the entity tries to kill him. The scientist is only saved when Sheppard enters his dream, and the two manage to overcome the creature. Returning it to the jungle world, the forest begins to light up around them with thousands of the creatures, and the team wisely decide that discretion is the better part of valour.