The genius of SG1 was that while it was largely an episodic, planet of the week style format of Star Trek, it still had a really strong story arc. So it works both as a show you can dip into randomly but also as something to binge watch.
I also really love the comical elements. Back when all other Sci-Fis largely took themselves seriously, SG1 wasn’t afraid to poke fun at itself. But it did itself in a way that didn’t detract the audience away from the seriousness of the plot. There’s even points where it breaks the four wall: like the 200th episode, which is a dig at itself, saying to the audience “we know this show is ridiculous at times but thank you for playing along”. The closest Star Trek got with that was the DS9 episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” (where the cast of the Defiant were sent backward in time to assist Captain Kirk).
In comparison to SG-1, I consider TNG to be the "monster of the week" format with stories rarely going beyond an episode or a two-parter. Stargate had tiny arcs going for seasons, single episodes having impact on episodes aired in later seasons and had significant amount of tiny details that just "clicked". It wasn't the LOST level of "everything is connected" but it definitely wasn't story of the week beoynd the first season. And in my opinion, both TNG and SG-1 had awful first seasons.
I know I should compare SG1 to DS9 or VOY, not TNG, but I prefer TNG over VOY/DS9/ENT so I am comparing my favorite Gate to favorite Trek.
> I also really love the comical elements. Back when all other Sci-Fis largely took themselves seriously, SG1 wasn’t afraid to poke fun at itself.
If memory serves, the producers have stated on the DVD commentaries that the show was supposed to be even more comical. They had "Wormhole X-Treme"-like (series inside joke) theme recorded for the actual SG-1.
I don't think any show has handled the progression of tech better. They start out as little more than scavengers, barely understanding what they're using, and end up building their own starships. And the progression makes sense every step of the way. And there's none of Trek's "fix this week's problem, then never mention this incredibly overpowered solution again".
Also there's never been an American SciFi show that's been so fundamentally athiest. I'm still amazed they got away with that.
There were a few overpowered solutions of the week, but typically they were then cleaned up in later episodes. The writing was rather fantastic at that.
Aside from the nanites that aged O'Neil feeling more advanced than any other tech the goauld scavenged. But then I suppose the galaxy is littered with stuff like that they had either forgotten or lost themselves...
> And there's none of Trek's "fix this week's problem, then never mention this incredibly overpowered solution again".
The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus, but things like the device built in the "Fifth Race" episode, it could open a wormhole to another galaxy, it was used in one more episode "Point of View", then conveniently forgotten about.
There's a few examples like that, but overall it was a good show. I wouldn't call it fundamentally atheist either, in fact the entire thing was about religion, especially the last two seasons.
> The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus
Prometheus was very much portrayed as a kludge that barely held together for quite a few episodes after it was built.
It wasn’t until the Asgards helped with development that it started to look anything like a functional spaceship.
> I wouldn't call it fundamentally atheist either, in fact the entire thing was about religion, especially the last two seasons.
It was about liberating cultures from worshiping gods. O’Neill is very much anti-religion in his comments throughout the show. And the Ori are as close to the definition of a “god” as one might get and there were 2 series and a movie dedicated to making a point that no entity should be worshipped regardless of how powerful they might be.
They even feature references to Earth religions and “disprove” they’re credibility (albeit it doesn’t touch the Abrahamic religions but that might have been a step too far for an American network).
That’s about as anti-religion as one can get and like the GP I was really surprised an American network was allowed to finance it.
Well religion, yes, absolutely, but behind every religion was a false God. (Dead false God). I'd call that implicitly athiest. By those last two seasons they're basically fighting mediaeval Christians. I don't think you can get much more obvious than that.
There's only one "religion is good" story off the top of my head (when the Asgard are introduced as protectors of the Viking planet), and in that one the religion is meant to be outgrown (there's a test).
> There's only one "religion is good" story off the top of my head (when the Asgard are introduced as protectors of the Viking planet), and in that one the religion is meant to be outgrown.
Great example. It pointed out that religion/mythology is bogus and was put in place so they (Viking folks) can contact the little, grey, Roswell-looking men after they mature out of the religion to see aliens' true form instead of a Viking dude.
BTW, Thor was voiced by Michael Shanks, who mainly portrayed Daniel Jackson.
People like myths. They generally don't like atheism because it's basically just rejecting their favorite myth, without even having one of its own [0].
Thus I believe a non-atheist watching the show is likely to see a bunch of other stories, which while false are actually more in line with their worldview than not.
They aren't going to latch onto the general implication of if all these stories about Gods are false, maybe theirs is too. There are already plenty of competing religions, and they rarely induce this effect.
[0] I feel bad about saying this, because the rationalist story of emergent creation is quite amazing. But for most people grokking complex details is not enjoyable.
> but things like the device built in the "Fifth Race" episode, it could open a wormhole to another galaxy, it was used in one more episode "Point of View", then conveniently forgotten about.
I think it was mentioned once more, one of the scientists said afterwards it broke down they still couldn't figure it out and fix it. That device was Ancient technology after all, not Asgard or anything else.
Also it didn't open the gate to another galaxy, the Stargate is capable of that all on its own. It amplified the energy output to juice of up the Stargate; come later seasons, once they found some ZPMs, they no longer needed it anyway.
> The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus
Agreed, the tech development timeline was way too fast starting with the Prometheus. Progress up to that point was a little more plausible.
I also never understood why they didn't come up with their own energy weapons. Those were the first things they started collecting, so they should have been able to replicate them given how other tech progressed. And who builds starships before they can build simple weapons?
Sure bullets were more accurate according to canon, but having a lightweight and inexhaustible weapon is also invaluable, so putting some effort into improving the accuracy of the energy weapons seems like a no-brainer. Never made sense to me, but a fun show regardless.
That was addressed in the show. The Prometheus used a retrofitted Asgard hyperdrive however the Asgards didn’t provide them with any tech to build weapons (at least until the very last episode in SG1).
You do see Earth building energy weapons based on Zat'nik'tel which was used for training exercises after SG1 scavenged the same devices from a Goa'uld camp who fashioned those same training guns that appeared like Earth weapons but were Zat-based. However those wouldn’t have worked on a larger scale (ship to ship).
They do also address in one episode why SG teams prefer their guns over the Jaffa’s energy weapons (the argument given was “accuracy”).
> The Prometheus used a retrofitted Asgard hyperdrive however the Asgards didn’t provide them with any tech to build weapons (at least until the very last episode in SG1).
That doesn't explain why they didn't develop their own long before then. They could reverse engineer the tech and materials science for fighters and spaceships but not energy weapons? Come on.
> They do also address in one episode why SG teams prefer their guns over the Jaffa’s energy weapons (the argument given was “accuracy”).
Yes, and I addressed that point in the post you replied to (see "sure bullets were more accurate according to canon"). In reality, energy weapons would have been included in standard kit simply because they don't run out of ammo. SG teams are potentially out for long deployments, how much ammo do you think they could carry with them?
It's simply implausible that they would not have prioritized developing their own energy weapons with an eye towards making them more accurate, rather than simply throwing their hands up and saying "bullets are more accurate". By canon logic, the staffs were weapons of terror and intimidation and not designed for war, but that doesn't mean a better design suited to combat wasn't possible.
> That doesn't explain why they didn't develop their own long before then. They could reverse engineer the tech and materials science for fighters and spaceships but not energy weapons? Come on.
Your confusing two terms there. Retrofit doesn’t mean to reverse engineer. It means taking hardware and placing it elsewhere. Earth didn’t know how to build a hyperdrive but, with help, they could take someone else’s working hyperdrive and install it into their own ship.
That seems a reasonable jump in tech imo because at no point in SG1 did they say Earth knew how to design their own hyperdrive.
> It's simply implausible that they would not have prioritized developing their own energy weapons with an eye towards making them more accurate, rather than simply throwing their hands up and saying "bullets are more accurate".
I agree but you’re trying to apply real world logic to a TV show. Stargate isn’t even intended to be hard SciFi.
At some level there needs to be some suspension of disbelief because naturally the writers are going to prioritise what makes a compelling story. The fact is that SG1 does a much better job at technology progression than most soft SciFi.
> Your confusing two terms there. Retrofit doesn’t mean to reverse engineer. It means taking hardware and placing it elsewhere. Earth didn’t know how to build a hyperdrive
I'm not talking about the hyperdrive, I'm talking about the ships themselves. The degree of science and engineering it would take to build the Prometheus and it's systems is enormous. All they had built previously was a tiny space worthy fighter. Consider the materials science needed for structural integrity and the science and engineering needed for artificial gravity, which presumably is part of the system that lets the Prometheus actually fly in-atmosphere. It's just insane that they could reverse engineer all of that in one or two seasons since they acquired gliders, but they couldn't devise their own real energy weapons based on staffs or Zats that they had access to since the beginning of season 1.
It's the biggest plot hole in the show's tech arc IMO. And yes, SG isn't hard sci-fi and requires suspension of disbelief, but that only goes so far. It's also perfectly fine to point out where that did go too far in a thread where we're explicitly discussing those missteps.
> It's just insane that they could reverse engineer all of that in one or two seasons since they acquired gliders,
Again, they didn’t reverse engineer it. They retrofitted it. They are not the same thing and the latter requires massively less understanding of the hardware to achieve.
You’re other points about structural engineering, gravity, etc are valid but they could also easily be handwaved by saying “retrofitted Asgard systems”. Which is precisely what they did do in the show. In fact when they showed the Prometheus I too was like “how the fuck did you build that?” But then Sam Carter would say “it’s retrofitted with alien tech” (ie they didn’t engineer a lot of it. They ostensibly just built a nuclear submarine and bolted on some Asgard hardware to make it work in space).
If you watch it carefully you’ll see that there was a sharing of peaceful technology. It was weapons tech that SG1 couldn’t secure. The talk about Asgard hyper drives, teleports and all sorts. And for the first few space flights it was always the American tech that was failing, not the alien systems.
I do agree that there is still complexity even in retrofitting other peoples technology. However it is several orders of magnitude easier than reverse engineering it. The difference is like you buying a PC and writing an application to run on it vs designing a CPU, RAM, motherboard, storage, visual display unit, keyboard and mouse etc and then programming an operating system for your application to run on too.
But since aliens weren’t sharing weapons tech (and bare in mind upscaling a handheld energy weapon to spaceship proportions requires reverse engineering rather than retrofitting), Earth was required to learn how to build energy weapons from scratch.
> It's also perfectly fine to point out where that did go too far in a thread where we're explicitly discussing those missteps.
I didn’t say you are not allowed to point it out. I’m just saying any soft SciFi will fall apart under heavy scrutiny. The point we were making wasn’t that Stargate was hard SciFi but rather that the tech progression was better than your average popular SciFi. Sure there are going to be aspects that seem off but most shows fair far worse because they will just invent some amazing piece of tech to save the heroes - tech that should alter the entire dynamic of the show - yet then never mention that tech again after that one episode. SG1 never really fell into that trap (relatively speaking).
> Again, they didn’t reverse engineer it. They retrofitted it. They are not the same thing and the latter requires massively less understanding of the hardware to achieve.
The X-302 and the Prometheus were fully human-built. They added the Asgard tech in later seasons, but they had hyperdrive prior to the retrofit you're talking about, see:
They reverse engineered the gliders by capturing some. That was the point of the X-301 retrofitted glider, which went bad, and the fully human-built X-302 fighter from reverse engineering glider tech. This includes human-built naquada and naquadria reactors, so reverse engineering this tech was not beyond their capabilities.
That's why it makes no sense that they couldn't reverse engineer the staffs and zats in all of that time. It was a convenient plot point they used to drive exploration and trade with other species, but it never really made sense.
> The X-302 and the Prometheus were fully human-built. They added the Asgard tech in later seasons, but they had hyperdrive prior to the retrofit you're talking about, see:
That was a Gu’uld hyperdrive. Also retrofitted.
> They reverse engineered the gliders by capturing some. That was the point of the X-301 retrofitted glider, which went bad, and the fully human-built X-302 fighter from reverse engineering glider tech. This includes human-built naquada and naquadria reactors, so reverse engineering this tech was not beyond their capabilities.
Both were retrofitted. The first was a Death Glider with human hardware added. The latter was Human tech with Gu’uld hardware added. But that doesn’t mean they understood how tho build a hyperdrive.
> That's why it makes no sense that they couldn't reverse engineer the staffs and zats in all of that time. It was a convenient plot point they used to drive exploration and trade with other species, but it never really made sense.
> The latter was Human tech with Gu’uld hardware added. But that doesn’t mean they understood how tho build a hyperdrive.
No, this is not correct, read the link. It literally says Prometheus was built on reverse engineered systems. The first hyperdrive was the naquadria design Carter came up with. Then it was replaced with an Al'kesh drive that was more reliable.
The whole point of the human-built ships is that they couldn't rely on captured tech because the Goa'uld had been booby trapping them.
> No, this is not correct, read the link. It literally says Prometheus was built on reverse engineered systems.
It’s a fan page of a TV show, not a technical manual. so I’m not going to take their use of technical jargon literally.
I distinctly remember them using the term “retrofitted” over and over again in the show. But maybe they did also say then second design was “reverse engineered” and I overlooked that. It’s all just make believe anyway so it’s not like it really matters who’s right :)
SG teams - SG-1 at least - carried Zats with them. In a later season they also show one of their scientists developing an energy weapon.
The real reason would be to keep things grounded and to keep teams from Earth distinct from the alien races. There were also quite a few times kinetic weapons were shown to be useful, like against the replicators.
Yes, they carried Zats for awhile and yes kinetic weapons are useful even if you have energy weapons. I don't think that really addresses my point that it's a glaring plot hole that humans in the Stargate universe built starships before they reverse engineered some very common energy weapons.
In looking at the timeline, they built Prometheus the same year as their first space worthy fighter, two years after attempting to retrofit a glider for their purposes (X-301). So it took 2-3 years to go from captured alien fighter to human-built space fighter and human-built battleship, but they couldn't replicate staff and Zat tech even though they had had them for 5 years by that point?
Right, "based on zat tech" and so not real zats. So they understood zats enough to come up with a facsimile, but not devise real combat zats better than those ridiculously awkward things the Goa'uld built?
Look, if you're not interested in critiquing the internal logic of this show and just want to make stupid comments like the show being make believe, then I'm not sure why you're replying because that's the whole point of this thread. We agree that SG-1 did tech progression better than most shows, but it still left some glaring holes regardless.
> Right, "based on zat tech" and so not real zats. So they understood zats enough to come up with a facsimile, but not devise real combat zats better than those ridiculously awkward things the Goa'uld built?
They didn’t reverse engineer the Zats, they scavenged those Zat-based weapons and built more.
Look, I went into detail about this at the start of this conversation. I don’t really see the point in repeating the same thing over and over.
> Look, if you're not interested in critiquing the internal logic of this show
I felt we’d exhausted any constructive critique and just moved onto browbeating me into agreeing with you that the show isn’t super realistic.
The point the other commenter was making is that this show was a little easier to suspend disbelief with regards to their use of tech than your average SciFi. While I don’t disagree with the overall point you’re making, you’ve really missed the spirit of the conversation (and the show) with your nitpicking.
I mean if you want to get scentific then where to we start? The impossible glowing eyes, snakes the size of squirrels living inside peoples brains, the entire concept of ascension, time travel, or what about their frequent use of fictional elements? It’s literally make believe.
> We agree that SG-1 did tech progression better than most shows, but it still left some glaring holes regardless.
Nobody is arguing it did. As I’ve said numerous times, this wasn’t intended to be hard SciFi. That’s a whole other genre
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the tech jumping the shark with the Prometheus. They handled pretty well how they were very much a small fish in a big pond.
As for the device in "Fifth Race" and "Point of View", it burned itself out, making it not very practical except in rare situations. It's totally a fair criticism to say that there are some pretty contrived reasons to keep their power generation limited (across all three series really), but I give them credit because at least they gave a reason rather than just forgetting it like many episodic SFF.
SG-1 isn't atheist. It's Gnostic. Gnosticism is one of the earliest Christian heresies (directly addressed in the New Testament, which was written in just the few decades after Christ, so very early) that was built on the idea that matter is bad, we're imprisoned in it by the false God (the God of the Bible in real Gnosticism), and that by the possession of the secret knowledge of gnosticism, you can transcend your earthly existence to become pure spirit, which is good. Anything keeping you from that is evil. Gnosticism also perfectly well fits with the material world being quite evil, and all the "false gods" running around fits in with that.
The Gnostically-transcendant "Ascended" beings also decided to not interfere with the material world, except for a couple of rebels. Those rebels were also portrayed as basically being wrong; both rebels in SG-1 also made enormous mistakes and the universe would have been better off if they also stayed hands off, and the Ascended were correct they shouldn't have done anything. (I would consider Atlantis more ambiguous on this point.)
When I say it "is" Gnostic, I don't mean that they were pushing Gnosticism per se. I just mean, that's the fundamental setup of the universe. The Highest Reality shown is Ascension. It would be a rational conclusion in that universe (though not the only rational conclusion, but a rational conclusion) to conclude that the only goal worth pursuing is Ascension. (In fact it was a bit jarring to me in some ways that the characters did not address that more fully at times.)
The show's Gnosticism doesn't seem to have included the particular idea that we were imprisoned in the material world on purpose, but it has pretty much everything else about it.
So bear in mind I mean this descriptively, not proscriptively; goodness knows I'm not advocating for this myself. I'm just saying that just as the Lord of the Rings is established on certain ultimate principles spelled out in the first section of the Silmarillion, the SG-1 universe is at its core, very Gnostic. I don't mean this as a good or a bad thing, just a descriptive one.
In fact a Gnostic would consider responding to the universe with atheism as a reasonable one to some extent, because the material world has nothing worthy of worship in it. They would just claim that there is still something better, to transcend the material world into pure spirit, but if you didn't know about that, atheism would be the next reasonable response.
(The ideas of Gnosticism can be further traced back in the mythologies of the area, like Greek and Roman. If you get early enough versions of the myths and read them with the mindset of the time, or read the philosophers of time, most of them also had some variant of the belief that life involved eventually moving into the pure spirit world, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad. Given the nature of the show and its relationship with mythology you could come at it that way as well. But it ultimately still strikes me as fairly Gnostic, rather than the older mythological interpretations. YMMV; if you know enough about this sort of thing to have opinions you are welcome to them by me.)
I really love this, it deserves a wider audience. It's even got Marcion's Archon/Stranger God dichotomy in the shape of the Ori and the Ascended. And it explains all the puzzles that get left around the galaxy waiting for people to solve them.
I don't buy it as intentional, but it fits beautifully.
You know this would also apply to Chariots of the Gods, right?
But there is this massive power creep that is getting incredibly hard to justifiability hide.
In the beginning they are just barely able to figure out how to use the ancient tech, but they eventually advance to being the most powerful civilisation in the known universe with massive space battles over Antarctica - all without any effect on the rest of the earth's population? One would imagine that at some point they would no longer see a point at keeping this all secret and let the general public also benefit from that technology.
I remember watching it at the time and really enjoying the cover up aspect. Then rewatching it 15 years ago and finding the cover up a little less plausible. Then after rewatching it last year the whole cover up aspect felt dumb. What I put it down to was the following:
At the time it was aired, it was intended to be set in our universe. So there was some logic in maintaining the cover up because we obviously weren’t hearing stories about alien battles in the news. It’s only when you rewatch it 20+ years later and see all the 90s tech mixed with futuristic tech that you’re pulled out of the realism that it’s set in our universe. Once you see this as an alternative universe with an alternative earth, you no longer need the cover up to keep the cover up to aid with the viewers suspension of disbelief.
It’s a bit like with Dr Who and how present day humans have never heard of the Daleks despite the high number of episodes where they’ve invaded Earth. The moment the victim recognises the Dalek the moment you realise this isn’t set in a reality you occupy and that’s when all the tension disappears (it no longer matters what happens because you don’t care about an alternative Earth you don’t live in).
Although, hilariously, they did have a Doctor Who episode where everyone had abandoned London on Christmas Eve because aliens had invaded the previous couple of Christmas episodes.
They give technology to general public, but in small doses and after rigorous safety tests. There were numerous incidents with "surprises" left in alien technology.
IMO the problem with the Ori is none of them were charismatic. Even Adria, the most "human" of the group, was a bore.
The Goa'uld on the other hand were flamboyant and arrogant and even charismatic. You wouldn't root for them -- most of the time -- but they were damn fun to watch (and to see defeated).
Yeah, the hierarchy of the system lords created an interesting political depth to the show but without falling back on the Star Trek cliche of long boardroom meetings and negotiations (which I do personally enjoy as well but that’s more of an acquired taste).
Another point in the Goa'uld's column is the gradual build of them as threats. At the beginning of the early seasons, Earth was only barely on their radar, and the characters tried to keep a low profile, but things escalated and they developed allies. At the beginning of season 9 the Ori show up and are comparatively static threats for the next 2 seasons and a movie.
SG1 is also an unusually easy thing to write fanfiction for, especially cross-overs with other universes... because you know, stargate. Not only that, the stargate is top secret, so knock-on effects are limited. The characters fill roles in a kind of nonoverlapping way so they're easy to reproduce faithfully: the dynamic between O'Neill and Teal'c or Daniel Jackson, then there are colorful characters like Rodney McKay, and you can guess what General Hammond would say to any hypothetical situation.
My all-time favorite fanfic is one where SG1 ends up on the Sword Coast (Dungeons & Dragons setting) and encounters such bizarre things as flesh golems and translation magic, but it's executed so well. https://m.fanfiction.net/s/5236609/1/Debt-of-Blood
I don’t agree DS9 did that (aside from the aforementioned episode). DS9 was the darkest and most heavily story arc dependent entry of all the 90s (and earlier) Star Trek series. Though Enterprise and onwards do take Star Trek in another direction (as you said too). I think DS9 would be Star Treks best example of a story arc emphasis and gritty character development (Sisko is very much an anti-hero at times. In fact every leading character has a spot light shined on their flaws. And as for the villains; they’re fleshed out and really disturbing at times (like the episode where Gul Dukat and Sisko are stranded on a planet and Dukat tries to convince Sisko that he’s actions during the occupation were justified - that has some really chilling moments). SG1, on the overhand, kept the “evilness” of the bad guys on a much lighter scale.
The Orville is a stronger example of a Star Trek-style show that balances all the same elements as SG1. The The Orville is written more as an out and out comedy, perhaps even a parody, with some drama elements rather than a drama with some comedy elements (like SG1 was).
I’d mentioned elsewhere about the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) hitting the same comedic tones too.
While this is true in many of the plots and themes explored on the show, especially the Dominion War, it by no means meant the show always took itself super seriously. In fact there is much more humor and general levity on DS9 than TNG which felt more stuffy and righteous.
It wasn't outright comedy besides a few episodes (Little Green Men, Our Man Bashir, Take Me Out to the Holosuite, Ferengi episodes), it was natural banter between character pairs (Odo and Quark, Bashir and Garak, Bashir and O'Brien, Worf/Martok/Sisko, Jake and Nog, the entire extended Ferengi family, etc.). Often episodes would be structured with a "serious" A-plot and a more soapy B-plot where most of the shenanigans would take place.
It's part of the reason DS9 felt, to me at least, more real and lived-in than TNG. TNG was promoting an ideology, a religion of sorts. Very aristocratic, many sacred cows. You would not expect humor to show up much for such people. DS9 on the other hand showed people living in a less than ideal situation, dealing with a galactic shitstorm that washed up on their shores. One of the ways real people deal with such situations is humor.
Granted this was the 90s, since 9/11 TV shows, including Star Trek, became more dark for the sake of being dark. Seemed like Archer was torturing people every other episode at times, and I'm not sure he knew how to smile. And for the epitome of "dark and super srs", look no further than nuBSG, where characters could not even take a dump without Irish bagpipe music being played over it.
Yes I miss the 90s. A lot of what I said about DS9 applies to Babylon 5 as well.
> In fact there is much more humor and general levity on DS9 than TNG which felt more stuffy and righteous.
While I agree TNG was more “stuffy” the examples you’d described were no different to the lighter elements in TNG. Eg most of the sub-plots that involved either Data were like that. Most of the Q episodes too. There was plenty of banter on TNG, what DS9 did differently was showed people being snarky with each other. Every episode of DS9 had someone delivering a cutting putdown to a colleague. This was something TNG lacked (because Gene Roddenberry didn’t think it worked with his vision but he was dead by the time DS9 was being written).
> A lot of what I said about DS9 applies to Babylon 5 as well.
B5 was originally pitched to the same network as Star Trek (Paramount?) but was rejected. Then a few months later DS9 was being produced. Straczynski (the creator of B5) had accused DS9 of ripping off his ideas. And to be fair there are parallels to his show: darker plot with a story arc about impending war based on a space station that hosts an array of aliens who don’t all get along. Even the worm hole idea could be related to the jump gates in B5 - both are subspace portals created by ancient aliens.
But you can also see a lot of parallels between SG1 and B5/DS9 too so it’s fair to say all art inspires other art.
I do miss 90s SciFi too and agree with your points about how dark things have gotten these days.
I actually feel TNG lost a lot of humor and levity and amusing banter after season 2. I know I'm in an extreme minority when I say I prefer the first two seasons of TNG over the rest. Yes most of the great, classic episodes are from season 3 on, but the filler in between became much less enjoyable. Too serious and dour for the middling forgettable plots being presented. Picard smiled more in the first 2 seasons than the rest combined.
> Most of the Q episodes too
Those were the worst Q episodes though (granted "I am NOT a merry man!" might alone have made Qpid worth it). Q was at his best when he was taken seriously by the crew, not treated as an annoying but harmless diversion.
As far as DS9 ripping off B5, there are some surface level similarities, but in the end the shows and characters and plot are very different and since the usenet wars of the 90s seem like a lifetime ago I think the shows can stand on their own without bringing up JMS's butthurt.
I was more saying that B5 as well did not take itself too seriously in the day-to-day, despite the very serious and deep themes the show explored. That show had plenty of time for stupid jokes and amusing banter. A lot of people found the acting on it to be too cringe/soapy. Well maybe that's why I enjoyed TNG season 1-2 so much...
Aside from “Q who” all of the earlier Q episodes were terrible. But the later ones are much better at using him for comic relief without going into the realm of absurdity.
> As far as DS9 ripping off B5
Just to be clear, I wasn’t voicing my opinion when I posted that. I was just reporting on the speculation.
There’s more to the story than what I’ve posted too. Lots of hearsay published from people who were on the inside at the time too. I don’t think we’ll ever know for certain but personally I don’t think it really matter if DS9 took ideas or not anyway because (and as I said earlier) all art copies each other. It’s not like Straczynski invented SciFi.
> but in the end the shows and characters and plot are very different
Of course they are. Even if Paramount did steal ideas from B5 (and I’m not suggesting they did) Paramount would still have to write it in a way that differed otherwise they’d have been clearly open to litigation.
> I think the shows can stand on their own without bringing up JMS's butthurt.
Straczynski wasn’t butthurt. He was the one who argued against litigation and even defended some of the writers on Star Trek.
> Well maybe that's why I enjoyed TNG season 1-2 so much...
I’m guessing you’re a fan of TOS as well? It sounds like you’re more a fan of Roddenberry’s influence on TNG than his other writers.
I did comment on arc as well, albeit I focused most of post on the comedic style so my points about the arc might have gotten lost.
Take the last 3 series of DS9, very few of them can be watched without understanding the context of the wider arc. SG1 went a little this way with the last two series too but the Ori arc was quite a departure from the rest of the show (even to the extent of having different leading staff).
The Ori arc does get a little darker (albeit not significantly so), introduces more space battles (now that Earth has spaceships of their own) and really brings the “battle of the gods” plot to the forefront (like DS9s Prophets vs Pah-wraiths) so there’s definitely a lot of crossover between the two franchises there.
But I feel the real genius in SG1 was its main arc that preceded the Ori; which is also the significant body of the shows work too.
I was going to comment on this as well, I could never tell if the "out takes" from that episode with the actor arguing if "Wormhole XTream" was a real series or not, was really real, or scripted! I found that to be sublimely hilarious.
Richard Dean Anderson who portrayed Jack O'Neill ("with 2 Ls"[0]) was made an honorary Air Force brigadier general.[1][2]
[0] This was an inside joke referring to the fact that RDA's character in SG-1 and following series was called Jack O'Neill while his predecessor, Kurt Russel, played Jack O'Neil in the original movie. He at least twice instructed someone to remember that his name was written "with two Ls", once adding that "The other one has no sense of humor".
The actual Air Force chief of staff, General Ryan, cameoed in one of the episodes with O'Neill being star-struck
SG1 did wonders for the airforce PR department (and it's no accident the episode the cameo happened in was the episodes with an airforce trainee being taken through the stargate)
By the end of SG1 the stargate program fell under the "Homeworld Command" department, headed by a 3-star general, still part of the Air Force.
Not sure how they can really progress from the. The power of Stargate is that it was based in the modern day, but also made technological progress. Not just militarily either, it was even alluded to as far as civilian progress in Moebius, when there was a reference to advanced technology of Daniel's camcorder, apparently the timeline which didn't have the stargate didn't have things that advanced (storage? Battery?)
The concept started needing a fair bit of suspension of disbelief, the programme should probably have been made public in "Disclosure", or certainly after "Lost City" when the Nimitz etc was destroyed. Indeed that may have been the plan had it been replaced by Atlantis rather than renewed for season 8.
I'd be happy with some sort of reboot of the concept (ideally with new characters so it's not an obvious copy, but something based in the modern world, with some form of new secret alien tech - stargate would be fine, but some changes to the worldbuilding so we don't already know the plot before hand)
Getting the right chemistry between the actors is key.
Having recently completed a re-watch of SG1 and Atlantis, I found it has great re-watch value, once I got into the story it felt really fresh again. I continued onto SGU and only made it a few episodes in before abandoning it, it just didn’t flow as well and felt very depressing. Here’s hoping if Amazon/MGM do revive it they go for more of the original flavour, if not necessarily any of the original cast.
> I continued onto SGU and only made it a few episodes in before abandoning it, it just didn’t flow as well and felt very depressing
It is true that SGU took too long but I think that it was cancelled right when it was getting it all together. Second season was way better than the first. Overall, I prefer SGU over SGA.
> Here’s hoping if Amazon/MGM do revive it they go for more of the original flavour, if not necessarily any of the original cast.
MGM attempted this with SGO[1] but it failed rather misearably.
> It is true that SGU took too long but I think that it was cancelled right when it was getting it all together.
Those were my thoughts back then as well. For the first season, I thought it was very mediocre, and I pretty only much watched it because I’m a big Stargate fan. During the second season, I became more and more invested and thought it could become amazing. Then it got canceled :/
You can actually feel the shift when they go and write out some of the stupider dangling plot threads from the first season.
The people left behind on the monolith planet that whats-her-name visits in her dreams to see her dead baby? Actually a computer program designed to manipulate dreams for monitoring and maintaining mental health and all those people on that planet actually died horribly.
What I loved the most about SGU was Robert Carlyle playing Nicholas Rush -- The "ship's brilliant Machiavellian scientist". Also, he was pure dead brilliant as Francis "Franco" Begbie in Trainspotting, he let it all hang out as Gary "Gaz" Schofield in The Full Monty, and he was enchanting as Rumplestiltskin / Mr. Gold / Weaver in Once Upon a Time.
Farscape deserves a rewatch if you're looking for another one. Watching it at binge pace rather than weekly pace you really catch Crichton's descent into madness.
(Something that doesn't work at binge pace for me: Frasier. Everyone's so much meaner than I remember).
>The show takes Sigmund Freud's axiom that the sex drive and the death drive are the two main forces controlling human nature: Stanley Tweedle, security guard (Level 4, the lowest), Zev Bellringer of 3BK, a woman who was forcibly converted into a love slave for failing to perform her wifely duties (she's got the looks and the libido, but none of the mental imprinting), Kai, an undead assassin, and 790, a robot head (that got the mental conditioning intended for Zev) zoom around the galaxy looking to get laid. They never learn lessons and blow up every planet they visit. Rinse and repeat. Take the fatalism of Wagnerian opera, the budget of a Sega CD game, and the logic (and sometimes acting) of softcore porn, and that's Lexx.
>[...] The show was often described as the anti-Star Trek, and, fittingly, you could say the show's five-year mission was to explore strange new worlds and blow them up, seek out the sleaziest and seediest new life and civilization, and to boldly come where no man has come before.
I thought SGU had an excellent premise and did take the show in a different direction. Are you sure it wasn't depressing because you knew how they left off?
I re-watched SGU a few years ago and it was worse than I'd remembered - I'd apparently forgotten/blocked out a lot of the bad parts.
In addition to that, for having an immediate storyline available, they took way waaaay too long to get into it. From what I've heard most fans dropped out before they even learned what Destiny's true mission was.
I think sibling summed it up really well, I liked the setting and the concept, but I found the focus on drama and inter-personal relationships a bit draining, which is to say not particularly entertaining or interesting to me at least. I’d have loved some more focus on the ship and the journey, but I understand avoiding ‘lore’ was actually a goal of the series so not aimed at me I guess…
I read that after the rewatch. It's a half-episode at best that quickly shoehorns a large conclusion onto it. Ever since that cominc, I've been looking for fanfictions instead....
I basically just want the cliffhanger to be resolved, so the comic may be an option.
But if someone has the source of alternate storyline that is more than just a quick wrap up then I am more than happy to read that instead
I rewatch SG-1 in its entirety every few years. Season 1 is by far the weakest thing until the last episode when we're told the Earth has a couple of... shuttles to defend itself against the aliens. From there, it's just pure fun for another 9 seasons.
Is it "the best sci-fi" out there? I can't say because Battlestar Galactica had its moments, Voyager had seasons 4-7, and the current (but last) Expanse season is absolutely incredible in every respect.
But SG-1 will always be an immutable top 3 entry for me. It's so much even my wife watched a few seasons with me back in the day. I love to see her laugh
>I can't say because Battlestar Galactica had its moments
Rewatching BSG recently and seeing the prisoner-abuse scenes on the Pegasus (no less with Cain as a woman in charge, stood particularly out to me this time) or the commentary on military occupation from the perspective of the insurgents during the height of the Iraq war on Syfy of all places really cemented why the show stuck with me.
BSG is my all time favorite, the only downside is that you cannot repeat the true first watch experience, the cliffhangers are not as powerful anymore.
SG-1 on the other hand is just as great on the 5th rewatch, but as others have mentioned, it doesn’t want itself to be taken too seriously.
My mother got me to listen to the directors commentary of SG-1 and there are real gems in there.
For example, how the early seasons had a 1,2,3 use of the phasers. Zap 'em once, and they are incapacitated, twice and they are dead, and 3... cleans up the mess... They abandoned it later because it was "too convenient".
Also, take notice of the giant wrench that appears from time to time in the background scenes in the base.
Also, there are so many callbacks and references in every episode, you really can spend hours or days drawing lines through story elements to see how long running some jokes are in the later parts of the series.
And then in "Wormhole Extreme" with the 'fake sg1 program' they had a problem that the stun guns lefts loads of badguys on the ground for a romantic scene
Director: We've already established that one shot stuns, and two shots kills. Nick just shot everybody twice.
Martin: So, three shots disintegrates them!
Director: OK, you know what? I'm going to pretend you didn't say that, because that is quite possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say.
They dropped the third shot feature after the second season
> For example, how the early seasons had a 1,2,3 use of the phasers. Zap 'em once, and they are incapacitated, twice and they are dead, and 3... cleans up the mess... They abandoned it later because it was "too convenient".
Not only because of that. Actors didn't like the design since the prop for Zats looked like penis.
I always found how they make fun of some of the early bonehead decisions in the show to be hilarious. Also just how Richard Dean Anderson was just having fun and not necessarily taking anything seriously especially towards the end
I think RDA took that a little too far at the end actually. I remember it coming across as disappointing or lazy, like he was just phoning it for the cheque.
What is it that makes SG-1 and Atlantis so extremely re watchable? I absolutely loved deep space 9, but watching TOS, TNG, and DS9 gave me such a feeling of disconnect and failed to immerse me like before. Maybe due to the subpar acting?
I actually enjoyed watching DS9 more the second time around than the first, and even moreso the third time with my partner.
I was a bit disappointed the first run as I favored TNG and felt DS9 didn't have as strong a lead or "pure" a story. But I gained a better appreciation for the character development on the re-watch and feel its characters have the most depth of all the series - especially its minor ones. Quark in particular is a gem.
And Voyager had at least one season there that delivered one great episode after the next.
We've been watching all the Star Treks from the beginning of TNG, and even though she's not a SciFi nerd she's picked up little nuanced bits here and there I missed before - a freshly rewarding experience. Now we're watching Lower Decks which is silly but jam-packed with nostalgic references.
When we began she'd always complain "why are you making me watch more of this". But the other day she said something technobabble to me about warp fields and I realized she's been converted into a bonafide closet Trekkie ;-).
If anything, I’d say the acting isn’t as good in SG1 and Atlantis as DS9. I think the reason SG1 works is the same reason the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) is more popular than X-Men or DC movies: MCU doesn’t take itself seriously.
When you have plots that are, at times, a little silly (as SciFi often can be) you need a suspension of disbelief to enjoy the show. When stories are too dark or take themselves too seriously it leaves the audience taking the story seriously. And that can be a problem if any aspects are far fetched or hard to take seriously.
However MCU doesn’t take itself seriously (generally speaking). It pokes fun at itself and winks to the audience at times saying “we know this is daft too but let’s have some fun”. This makes it much easier to suspect one’s disbelief.
SG1 employs the same approach to storytelling where it will use humour to disarm some of the more far fetched sub-plots allowing the audience to play along more easily.
It’s probably because SG1 brought with it a more modern mode of storytelling and production values which is familiar and past some threshold that star trek doesn’t meet until maybe the later parts of ds9 to an extent at best.
I liked the stories of Babylon 5, but the acting is so ridiculous that I could hardly concentrate on it. It felt like watching a play with very over-the-top actors.
To me Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica are the same in that regard. Ridiculously strange bad acting, or maybe just completely different from what else I was watching at the time, but an interesting story line which kept my interest.
I've been replaying God of War thanks to the recently released PC port and when Kratos (voiced by Christopher Judge aka Teal'c) says "Indeed" the first time I laughed out loud. The show has a lot of qualities, but especially that it makes you feel really fond of the characters.
Same here in Belgium. It is not available in any format except boxed dvd, and even then only sg-1 and not the other shows or the movies. It was rebroadcast on tv recently and I was happy to share it with my kid, but they stopped after season 5.
The situation around streaming of movies and tv shows is abysmal. It doesn’t matter how many services I pay for, there is a lot of content which is not available in my local market which is available in the U.S.
Does that even work in 2022? Netflix has been very active in banning VPN based access for years. Might as well just subscribe to Netflix and just torrent the shows with that VPN. Same end result, less hassle, and no chance of Netflix flagging your account for suspicious activity.
There was recently a table read by the original cast of a script generated by an AI. It's available to subscribers of a service called "The Companion".
Not to take a away anything that SG-1 meant to so many people, but I personally would rank other series a bit higher. Back then I was not that much of a fan for these kind of comedic elements in SciFi. But I thoroughly enjoyed The Orville last year. Maybe I give SG-1 a spin.
Can you recommend other SciFi series from back in the day?
Babylon5 has the best story arc on the macro and micro level from my personal opinion.
There were also other series like "Space - above and beyond" or "Dark Skies" that only got a single season despite incredible potential to paint a really deep and unique universe.
I stumbled over Gene Roddenberry's "Earth - Final conflict" and am inclined to binch it.
The first season of Earth - Final Conflict was good, but the story telling and writing got weaker after that. Watch past S1 if you want but it's disappointing IMO after that given the strong start it had.
The spin off of SG1, Stargate Atlantis follow's the same formula pretty closely. If you enjoy SG1 you'll enjoy SGA.
Person of Interest is enjoyable as well, especially if you've done software development. Good mix of drama and humor.
Reimagined Battlestar Galactica series is a go to for space / sci fi opera-ish story telling without the singing. If you have any familiarity with US Navy carrier operations, you'll also appreciate all of the little nods to how a modern military conducts it'd day to day. It did suffer from the writer's strike and got a little weak last season though.
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda had a good first two seasons and then it got really weak. The concept was good though, and the designs of the Systems Commonwealth High Guard warships is some of the most unique I've seen in science fiction.
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
I'm still waiting for the movie finale to Stargate Atlantis, which was supposed to resolve what exactly happens to the city after it was moved in the series finale.
Though actually, maybe that could be the impetus for revealing the Stargate to the rest of Earth, as backstory to the new series...
I'm a die hard fan. I started watching Stargate SG-1 when I was a kid in 1997 (season 1). I've seen ever single episode of every series. Every movie. All multiple times.
I REALLY don't want to see a modern reboot that is like Star Trek Discovery. I'll be so disappointed if they do.
I do think it is possible to revive the franchise and make a compelling show. However, it would be tough to pull off. I love that the show never took itself too serious. Stargate Universe was the opposite and flopped because of this.
Richard Dean Anderson made Stargate for me, it wouldn't be the same without him. Star Trek was lucky they were able to get Patrick Stewart and Avery Brooks but I doubt the Stargate reboot will do as well at casting.
They tried that with SG Universe right? I thought it had real premise but it didn’t really take off. Iirc, there was a writers guild strike which killed all momentum or something.
The Stargate universe has its tongue firmly in its cheek. SG:U tried to play it grimdark. You can parody serious works, but going the other way around is much harder (IMO).
I agree a reboot would likely be disappointing. I wouldn't mind a continuation of the movie version though. I was excited a few years ago when they announced they were going to make two sequels to the movie, which would ignore the show. I think would be the right move. Even though I thoroughly enjoy the show, the movie is definitely telling a slightly different story. Unfortunately, it looks like the momentum on the sequels has died.
During the pandemic I've been avoiding "dark" shows and movies, just for my own mental health. SG-1 is a great rewatch because it is light and optimistic.
Polish SG-1 fan forum was huge and it kickstarted my belief that meeting people online-first is possible. I traveled 90km to meet people I met on that board.
Hey man, what do you use to watch it? I only found dvds and would like some streaming solution in Poland. It is also funny you say that because I never met anyone in Poland that knew the series, only the movie.
There was a very active community back in the day: http://forum.gwrota.com/
It spawned an entire community of TV-shows translators that now translate other series.
And of course, it was torrent then. There was just no other way to legally get it. Torrent was much more popular
I also really love the comical elements. Back when all other Sci-Fis largely took themselves seriously, SG1 wasn’t afraid to poke fun at itself. But it did itself in a way that didn’t detract the audience away from the seriousness of the plot. There’s even points where it breaks the four wall: like the 200th episode, which is a dig at itself, saying to the audience “we know this show is ridiculous at times but thank you for playing along”. The closest Star Trek got with that was the DS9 episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” (where the cast of the Defiant were sent backward in time to assist Captain Kirk).