Samantha Carter (Stargate SG-1)

Carter, you're one of this country's natural resources, if not national treasures.

Jonathan J. O'Neill.

Samantha Carter is an astrophysicist, engineer, and pilot as well as a member of the United States Air who played a key role in establishing the Stargate Program before being assigned to the SGC's flagship team, SG-1 where she was the second-in-command for eight years before becoming the commanding officer of SG-1 for a year. Considered Earth's leading expert on the Stargate and a host of other alien technology, her former commanding officer, Jack O'Neill once emphatically proclaimed her brain to be a national resource.

After serving on SG-1 for ten years during that time which she saved her own life and those of her colleagues during various missions as a member of SG-1, the SGC and as a member of the United States Air , Carter was eventually reassigned to the Atlantis expedition which she led for over a year before being replaced by Richard Woolsey.

In 2009, Carter was later made the commander of the Daedalus-class ship, George Hammond which was originally called the Phoenix with the ship itself later being renamed the George Hammond in honor of the former Commander of the Stargate program, George S. Hammond, who died in 2008 after suffering a heart attack.

Carter is the daughter of Debra Carter and Jacob Carter, an Air Major General. She was born on December 29, 1968, although Orlin seemed to believe she was born in the month of May. She has a brother named Mark Carter, who is married and has two children, David and Lisa.

In 2003, she told Aden Corso that she was named Samantha as her father had wanted a boy. (SG1: "Forsaken")

As a child, Sam often sat on the willow tree in her backyard. On sunny days, the wind blowing through the leaves sounded exactly like rain when she closed her eyes. Replicator Carter later possessed this memory. (SG1: "Gemini")

Her mother Debra Carter sang

"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." to her when she was a child. (SG1: "Grace")

Her mother died in the early 1980s when she was twelve. She blamed her father who was supposed to go pick her up at the airport but didn't, forcing Mrs. Carter to take a taxi and have the accident that killed her. Eventually, Sam forgave her father, although Mark didn't until after many years of estrangement. (SG1: "Seth", "The Devil You Know", "Entity", "Ascension")

She was exceptionally bright and went on to get a Ph.D. in Astrophysics with extensive knowledge in quantum mechanics while attending the U.S. Air Academy. She worked at The Pentagon for two years, and logged over 100 hours in enemy space during the Gulf War. She was assigned to work on the Stargate Project in 1993, two years before Dr. Daniel Jackson had the opportunity, and was a prominent member of investigating the sciences behind it and developing the Earth Dialing computer. It is not known whether she was the leader or just an important member of the team that designed the dialing computer. Captain Carter believed she should have been part of the first team to go to Abydos with Colonel Jack O'Neill and Dr. Daniel Jackson. The reason why she ended up not going was due to the urgency to complete the important first mission on time. (SG1: "Children of the Gods", "Secrets", "Prodigy")

Alternate realities :

• In an alternate reality visited by Daniel Jackson in 1998, Dr. Samantha Carter, Ph.D was a civilian astrophysicist engaged to Brigadier General Jack O'Neill. She met Daniel during a Goa'uld invasion of Earth and correctly determined that he was from another reality. She was both amazed and excited at witnessing Daniel's videotape of P3R-233 which showed her counterpart from our reality. She committed suicide rather than surrender to Apophis' forces, luring a group of Jaffa into the conference room and then setting off a grenade to kill them all. Like her counterpart in our reality, she seems to be analytical and unflappable. She wore her hair long with a barrette. (SG1: "There But for the Grace of God")
• In an alternate reality, Samantha Carter, Ph.D was a civilian astrophysicist who discovered how to make the Stargate work in 1995. While it is not specifically stated, it can be assumed that the first mission through the Stargate was to Abydos, as was the case in our reality. Furthermore, it is possible that Sam was part of the team on the Abydos Mission. She had been married to Jack O'Neill for a year when Apophis conquered Earth in 1999. During the Goa'uld invasion of Cheyenne Mountain, Jack was killed by Teal'c, the First Prime of Apophis, and his had a huge effect on her. With Major Charles Kawalsky, she journeyed through the Quantum Mirror to our reality and met her counterpart as well as that of her late husband. She found the presence of the Colonel Jack O'Neill of our reality difficult to bear as he was virtually identical to her husband in terms of his personality. When entropic cascade failure occurred, due to two versions of the same person existing in one reality, Stargate Command decided that she and Kawalsky had to return to their own reality. Perhaps due to her lack of military training, the Carter from this reality seemed to be much more emotional than her counterpart in our reality to the point that she grimly reflected that her counterpart was "superior" to her as she had failed to stop the Goa'uld invasion despite knowing they were coming for two years while her counterpart had defeated an invasion with advance notice of only a few days, though they seem to be equal in the scientific realm. She eventually overcame her feelings of inadequacy towards her counterpart and they were able to work well together. The two Carters repaired the power booster device that allowed the SGC to contact the Asgard in our reality. After returning to her own reality, she used the device to contact the Asgard of her reality, who were able to liberate Earth from Apophis' forces. She also wore her hair long but without a barrette. She told the Sam of our reality that she could not imagine "going military." Unlike Kawalsky, she did not appear to blame the Teal'c of our reality for his counterpart's role in Jack's as she gave him a kiss on the cheek to think him for his assistance in establishing contact with the Asgard. Though she was married to Jack O'Neill, she still referred to herself as Samantha Carter rather than Samantha O'Neill. (SG1: "Point of View")
• A version of Carter (it is unknown if her first name is the same) was briefly glimpsed by Dr. Daniel Jackson when he was attempting to find his reality on the Quantum Mirror. He thought that this was his own reality until he noticed that this Carter was still a captain. This version of Carter also seemed to waiting for someone to return to her reality through the Quantum Mirror. (SG1: "Point of View")
• An alternate version of Samantha Carter, who was likewise a colonel, came to our reality in 2006 in an attempt to steal a Zero Point Module from Atlantis and return it to their reality to use in securing their Earth from an Ori attack. When the original SG-1 took steps to stop additional SG-1s from arriving, the alternate SG-1 gained control of the Prometheus and set course for Atlantis. Eventually, the original Mitchell outsmarted his counterpart and her team was captured. The original SG-1 was able to use the alternate SG-1's methods to send the various SG-1s back to their own realities. She was married and had been on her honeymoon several months earlier. In this reality, both her father Jacob Carter and his symbiote Selmak were still alive in 2006. (SG1: "Ripple Effect")
• In another alternate reality, Samantha Carter was not part of SG-1 in 2006 but was home for maternity leave. She had been involved with Martouf, but according to him, had moved on and was now with someone else, though he did not specifically say who it was. In this reality, Brigadier General Jack O'Neill was still the commanding officer of Stargate Command. (SG1: "Ripple Effect")
• In another alternate reality, Samantha Carter was a member of an SG-1 who wore Blue Digital Tiger Stripe uniforms. In 2006, she and her team were under heavy fire and ended up in our reality. Shortly afterwards, they were examined in the infirmary. Eventually, this SG-1 were sent back to their own reality. (SG1: "Ripple Effect")
• In another alternate reality, Samantha Carter was a member of an SG-1 who wore Digital Woodland USMC MARPAT uniforms. Her teammates were Daniel Jackson, Cameron Mitchell and Teal'c, who unlike his counterpart in our reality was still bald. In 2006, she and her team ended up in our reality but were eventually sent home to their own. (SG1: "Ripple Effect")
• In another alternate reality, Samantha Carter was a member of an SG-1 who wore Hazmat suits. In 2006, she and her team ended up in our reality but were eventually sent home to their own. (SG1: "Ripple Effect")
• In another alternate reality, Samantha Carter was a member of an SG-1 who wore green jungle fatigues. In 2006, she and her team ended up in our reality but were eventually sent home to their own. (SG1: "Ripple Effect")
• In another reality reality, Samantha Carter was still a major and had been married to a "dotcom millionaire smartass" named Dr. Rodney McKay, though they eventually divorced. In 2007, she was killed during an experiment to develop a new power source to help protect Earth against the Ori, the experiment triggering an explosion when it pulled the Carter from our reality into her reality. (SG1: "The Road Not Taken")

Alternate Timelines :

• In an alternate timeline in which Earth became an ally of the Aschen, Samantha Carter stayed faithful to her decision to support the alien race until she discovered the sinister actions behind the scenes. In the last ten years of her life, Carter eventually rose to the rank of Colonel before retiring from the United States Air , married Joseph Faxon, Earth's Ambassador to the Aschen, and worked on several major projects (one of which included the transformation of Jupiter into a Star). When Carter and her husband were having difficulty conceiving a child, she along with Dr. Janet Fraiser began an investigation that led to the discovery of the Aschen's efforts to sterilize Earth's population through the Anti-aging vaccine. The two women promptly told Teal'c, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and later, Jack O'Neill. The group soon formed a plan to send a message through the Stargate and back in time ten years previous, warning their past selves to avoid the mission that would have brought them into contact with the Aschen. But finding that they needed a GDO to make the plan work, Carter confessed what she had discovered to Joe, who then revealed that he had known about the sterilization all along, although he had been told it would only be a third of the population rather than the numbers that it had been; he attempted to justify his consent to the plan on the grounds that the Goa'uld would have killed them otherwise, but Sam countered that the only difference was that the Aschen were taking more time. Although he was convinced to obtain the GDO for them, he gave it up only after O'Neill gave his word that Carter would have no further part in what they were planning. Despite Joe's efforts, however, Carter turned away from her husband and rejoined her team in the plan's final execution. Even though the area around the Stargate was under heavy fire and O'Neill, Jackson, and Teal'c all lay dead around it, Carter ran to the Stargate to finish what they had begun. Picking up O'Neill's written message, she stumbled the last few feet to the Stargate and sent it through as she fell under the fire of the automated defense system. (SG1: "2010")
• In an alternate timeline accidentally created by SG-1 in which the Stargate Program never existed, Dr. Samantha Carter worked at the Department of Aerospace Research as a copy editor in 2005. In addition, the Dr. Carter of that reality possessed very little of the confidence that the Sam of the original timeline had. Sam, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and Colonel Jack O'Neill traveled to Chulak to recruit Teal'c. They traveled back to ancient Egypt to fix the timeline. As she and Jack worked alone in the Puddle Jumper, he told her that he found her attractive, but she replied that she liked Daniel, whom Jack believed might have been gay. A short while later, however, when thinking they were going to be killed, she kissed him, saying that she had lied and that she had only wanted to take her time to get to know him better. He then cut off her rambling explanation by kissing her again. When Daniel told them over the radio that it was safe to come outside, Jack replied that they would be a bit longer; they then kissed again, sparks flew from the broken machine in the background, and Sam remarked that she could "fix that." (SG1: "Moebius, Part 1", "Moebius, Part 2") She and Jack began a relationship and had a child named Ellie O'Neill, who was named for Sam's late mother Eleanor Carter who had died of cancer in 2003 at the age of 61. After the rebellion against Ra, she was appointed as the chief architect to the Pharaoh Hor-Aha. This version of Sam grew up without a father as the Jacob Carter of her timeline was killed in the Vietnam War in December 1969 when she was less than two years old. Her father's wingman Lieutenant George Hammond, who had tried unsuccessfully to save him, brought Jacob's body home to her mother. Furthermore, she was an only child as, in the original timeline, her younger brother Mark Carter was born in 1971. While Sam was growing up, Eleanor was overly protective of her. Her daughter told the Sam of our timeline that she had had a hard time convincing her mother to even let her get a car and claimed that she had never even considered joining the Air as she knew her mother would have "freaked out" if she had. (Stargate SG-1: Moebius Squared)
• In another alternate timeline, Carter was trapped with SG-1 on the Odyssey in a time dilation field while she tried to figure out a way to circumvent the ship's new Asgard upgrades, because the Ori were able to track them. It took her fifty years to figure out a way by sending Teal'c back in time. During the 50 years, she looked over all the Asgard upgrades and learned to play the cello. She was killed temporarily as the ship was destroyed, but her plan was successful and Teal'c traveled back in time to a few seconds before the Odyssey was destroyed, his memory of the original timeline still intact. He prevented the new timeline's Carter from activating the time dilation field, and the Asgard systems were shut down, allowing the Odyssey to escape, ultimately preserving the Asgard's legacy. (SG1: "Unending")
• In an alternate timeline created as a result of Lt. Colonel John Sheppard being sent 48,000 years into the future, Michael Kenmore controlled the Pegasus galaxy. In an effort to stop his crusade, Carter, unwilling to stand by and let Michael win, took command of the Phoenix and attacked Michael's fleet several times using Guerrilla warfare. However, luck ran out as Michael had leaked false information and Carter and her ship were ultimately led into an ambush. Losing shields, hyperdrive and Asgard plasma beam weapons, Carter evacuated the crew, but the transporters went offline before Carter herself could escape the ship. In a last ditch effort, she set the Phoenix on a collision course with the Hybrid controlled Hive ships. All three Hive ships were destroyed in the resulting explosion, as well as the Phoenix. Carter was killed, and as Dr. Rodney McKay put it, "another empty casket was buried." (SGA: "The Last Man")
• In another alternate timeline created by Ba'al in which the Stargate Program also never existed, she became an astronaut for NASA and Mission Commander of the Intrepid. During one of her missions in 2004, she risked her own life trying to save the rest of her crew. She was killed, but her body was never found. She was deemed a hero and her funeral ceremony was held on the front lawn of the White House. It was learned that it was the real Ba'al who traveled back in time to create this alternate timeline by attacking the Achilles, the ship which brought the Stargate to the United States in 1939. Another alternate timeline version of Samantha Carter escaped the Extraction Ceremony of the last Ba'al clone with Cameron Mitchell and Daniel Jackson managed to escape Ba'al's rampage, although Jack O'Neill died after the Ba'al clone injected him with a lethal isotope designed for the symbiote in its body and Teal'c and Vala Mal Doran completely disappeared from existence altogether. She, Daniel and Cameron escaped through the Stargate, emerging onto a frozen ship that harboured the Stargate. All three later found protective clothing capable of shielding them from the icy wind and they proceeded to get off the ship although Daniel told them to go on without him as he had been overcome with frost, having accidentally stepped in a frozen pool. All three were later picked up by a Navy submarine and met the Jack O'Neill, who was a colonel in Special Ops and whose son Charlie O'Neill was still alive. President Henry Hayes later split them up for a year, giving them new identities and lives to lead as he stopped their efforts to go back and change the past, claiming that they didn't have the right to do that. In 2009, Qetesh, Ba'al's queen who used Vala Mal Doran as her host, attacked Earth, having killed Ba'al, thus paving the way for a invasion. Teal'c, Ba'al's First Prime later attempted to stop her and formed a temporary partnership with Mitchell, Carter and Jackson. Qetesh's Jaffa later attacked the Stargate hideout, giving Mitchell an opportunity to get through the Stargate but at the cost of both Daniel and Sam, who were killed by Jaffa troops storming the hideout. The resulting battle left Teal'c injured but gave him enough time to destroy the building, killing both himself and Qetesh in the process. Mitchell who had arrived back in the past and met his grandfather later triumphed in ensuring that Ba'al's plan never came to pass and that everything went ahead as normal, thus resulting in the original timeline being restored and marking the true end of the System Lords at last. (Stargate: Continuum)

Personality and traits :

During her off hours, Sam likes to work on her Motorcycle (sometimes helped by MSgt. Sylvester Siler), work on her Naquadah generators, play chess with Cassandra Fraiser on Saturdays (when she is on Earth), and has lately discovered that she does, indeed, like fishing. She also talks to her plants. Her service number is 366349. (SG1: "One False Step", "The Curse", "Rite of Passage", "Threads")

Some evidence does seem to imply that she may be at least somewhat religious. For example, in 1997, she stated that she hadn't heard Church bells for a long time and in 2001, when a brainwashed Teal'c asked her whether she believed in a god, she refused to give a straight answer. However, after being seriously wounded by an Ori soldier, she expressed a wish for something beyond her scientific views, stating: "I spent my entire life dedicated to science. Spent the last ten years, trying to convince people they believed in false gods. I don't feel like science is gonna help me. Right now, I'm just hoping somewhere one of those gods…" (SG1: "Bloodlines", "Threshold", "Line in the Sand")

According to Dr. Rodney McKay, whilst suffering from a concussion and hallucinating her, he said that she "has an aptitude for creativity and a "sixth sense" when it comes to problem solving and that she "has a certain wisdom to her intelligence". (SGA: "Grace Under Pressure")

Hobbies :

During her off hours, Sam likes to work on her motorcycle (sometimes helped by MSgt. Sylvester Siler), work on her Naquadah generators, play chess with Cassandra Fraiser on Saturdays (when she is on Earth), and has lately discovered that she does, indeed, like fishing. She also talks to her plants. (SG1: "One False Step", "Nemesis", "The Curse", "Rite of Passage", "Threads")

Service Awards and Decorations :

Over the course of her military career, Samantha Carter has received a number of awards and decorations for her service in the United States Air . (SG1: "Secrets", "New Order, Part 2") (SGA: "Reunion").

• Senior Space Operations Badge
• Airman's Medal
• Meritorious Service Medal
• Air Commendation Medal
• Air Achievement Medal
• Air Organizational Excellence Award
• National Defense Service Medal
• (with bronze service star)
• Air Longevity Service Award
• (with two bronze oak leaf clusters)
• Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon
• Air Training Ribbon
• Air Commander's Insignia

Other versions :

• Replicator Carter, the Human-Form Replicator version of Carter unlike the original is a power-hungry psychopath hellbent on universal domination.
• Samantha Carter (android)

Notes :

• Sam drives a silver Volvo P1800 in 2001. In 2002, she was driving a silver Volvo S60. (SG1: " Measures", "Prometheus")
• Sam's act of blowing up Vorash's sun in 2001 is frequently referenced as one of her more fantastic acts. (SG1: "Fallen", "Inauguration", "Reckoning, Part 2")

Behind the Scenes :

• Though she appears in fewer episodes of Stargate SG-1 than Teal'c, her starring role during Season 4 of Stargate: Atlantis and her two appearances in Stargate Universe puts her total number of appearances at 228, more than that of any other character in the Stargate universe.
• Along with Walter Harriman, she is only one of two SG-1 characters to appear in all five seasons of Stargate: Atlantis.
• Sam is one of only eight characters (and the only female character) to appear in all three series, the others being Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, Rodney McKay, Richard Woolsey, Bill Lee, Walter Harriman and Kevin Marks.
• Along with Walter Harriman and Kevin Marks, she is one of only three characters to appear in the final episodes of both Stargate SG-1 ("Unending") and Stargate: Atlantis ("Enemy at the Gate"). All three characters went on to appear in the Stargate Universe pilot "Air, Part 1".
• Amanda Tapping stated in a December 2005 interview that the dog tags Carter wears throughout the series state that she is Roman Catholic. In the same interview, Tapping stated that, in her mind at least, Carter is religious, but that she probably doesn't follow organized religion. However, the writing on her dog tags is not legible in any episode, so none of this is conclusive.
• Along with Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, Teal'c, George S. Hammond, Walter Harriman and Sylvester Siler, she is one of only seven characters to appear in all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1 and the only female character to do so.
• Along with John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Elizabeth Weir, Teyla Emmagan, Radek Zelenka, Chuck and Walter Harriman, she is one of only eight characters to appear in all five seasons of Stargate: Atlantis, although her appearance in Season Two was merely a hallucination. However, Carson Beckett appears in Season One to Three while his clone appears in Seasons Four and Five.

Where is Sam when she becomes naked and how does it happen?