Sheppard, McKay, and a couple of Red Shirts up and coming young scientists take a romp around their local solar system. This serves the dual purposes of checking out an Ancient defense satellite discovered by Dr. Gaul and giving McKay some driving lessons out in space where there's nothing much to hit. When they get to the satellite, which is huge but apparently burnt out, they pick up a faint Wraith distress signal from the planet's surface, and manage to extract permission from Weir to go and investigate.