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Cliff Simon memorial [Stargate] thread
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I kill threadshe/himRegistered User regular
I kill threadshe/himRegistered User regular
Stargate is a science fiction media franchise based on the film written by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. The franchise began with the film Stargate, released on October 28, 1994, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Carolco, which grossed US$197 million worldwide. The movie stars Ego and the lawyer from Secretary, who travel to the opposite side of the known universe via a wormhole and meet the evil Egyptian god Ra. Antics ensue, they kill the bad guy, save the day, and live happily ever after.
Three years later, in 1997, Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner would create a television series titled Stargate SG-1 that would become one of the broadest and longest running sci-fi franchises to date. SG-1 ran on Showtime for five seasons, then another five seasons on the SciFi channel. It would spawn two other live action franchises, Atlantis and Universe, as well as two direct-to-DVD movies, The Ark of Truth and Continuum (more movies were originally planned but never produced). So who starred in the show?
freaking MacGyver, that's who!
The main SG-1 plot revolved around fighting off a race of aliens known as the Goa'uld (pronunciation varied), parasites who could infect and control higher order beings. Although most of the Goa'uld were the namesakes fo the Egyptian pantheon, they also counted among their members some of the Greek gods, a few Celtic gods, and a handful of other mesopotamian gods (Baal, most notably). There were also a few one-offs (Yu the Great, Kali) who were minor characters borrowed from other mythologies. In addition to having genetic memory (so new Goa'uld were born with all the memories of their parents), they were, as a race, objectively Evil, although it varied whether they were Lawful (most), Neutral (Anubis), Chaotic (Baal), or somewhere in between (Apophis). The Goa'uld posed as gods but were really just sufficiently advanced aliens but were actually not even that, they were just cunning scavengers who were able to take over other races, steal all of their tech, make it their own, and then pretend to have invented it.
Eventually we learn of other alien races, like the Asgard, who had for a long time fought against the Goa'uld. Thor becomes a friend of the team, and in the end Terrans and Asgardians become a very close alliance. The Asgardians resemble the Roswell Grays, and we learn that this is due to them reproducing via cloning, which had caused their bodies to degrade over time. We also learn of another race, even older than the Goa'uld or the Asgardians, a race known only as The Ancients. We eventually learn that they are an earlier iteration of humanity that, more or less as a race, ascended to a higher plane of existence. The introduction and exploration of the Ancients adds a new layer of philosophy to the show, and we eventually learn that other races can also ascend. The transition from the Goa'uld arc to the Ancients arc is underlined by a new villain, Anubis, a Goa'uld who tricked an Ancient into helping him ascend after the Goa'uld leaders kicked him out (yes, the leaders of the race of evil kicked this dude out for being too evil. Yikes.
Anubis proves an interesting and powerful new villain, and combined with both the new philosophical edge of the Ancients plotline, as well as the exploration of a galaxy of alien races who now exist in a power vacuum after the defeat of the Goa'uld, provides a lot of new and interesting ideas for the show, and many feel these are the golden years of the series. After Anubis' defeat, the last 2-3 seasons dive deeper into the Ancients and their history, and we learn that they were not the first race to ascend, nor indeed even the first iteration of humanity, and a new race of evil demigod-like aliens are introduced. This last arc, the Ori, is often considered a post-script, as the principle lead, RDA, left the series, and much of the supporting cast was phased out. We get a new team leader (Cameron Mitchell), as well as a new quirky alien friend (Vala Mal Doran), all to compliment the all new bad guys. A lot of plot threads from earlier seasons are left dangling through this phase, though the biggest ones will eventually be tied up between the last season and the direct-to-DVD movies (which in reality were basically just multi-part episodes shot all together).
SG-1 was survived by its primary spin-off, Stargate: Atlantis, which follows a team who has found the lost city of Atlantis, once populated by the Ancients, and now an entire other galaxy. This series introduces new villains, the Wraith, and tries its best to explore some new ideas, while not being afraid to reach back to what helped make SG-1 successful. Atlantis ran for five seasons, just hitting the 100 episode mark. I will admit I didn't watch much of Atlantis, so I can't speak authoritatively to the series.
Stargate: Universe was another spin-off that started later the same year Atlantis was ended, and follows a multi-national team of much younger heroes who have become stranded, far from known space, on a ship designed by the Ancients to build and place Stargates on planets throughout space, to help facilitate evolution and exploration. The series ran for two seasons and although it had a fairly strong start and was initially well received, viewership and interest dwindled quickly, and some have argued that this shows failure may have led to the other planned SG-1 movies being scrapped (though frankly they had finished their stories, and apart from a joint SG-1/Atlantis crossover movie, they didn't need to make more).
So that's pretty much it! The Stargate franchise turns 25 today. I've tried to rewatch the series with my wife, whose never seen the earlier seasons but loved the later ones. Honestly the first few seasons are a fucking slog to get through, the show really takes a while to decide what it wants to be. It very much falls into the late-90s trap of being a "(blank) of the week" type show until the first season finale, and then taking most of the second season to really establish what it's going to be about long-term. Overall though, it's a very good show!
tl;dr?
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Lost City: Part 1 and 2, which serve as a jumping off point for Stargate: Atlantis, are a pair of the highest rated episodes according to IMDB. Team finds an ancient repository of knowledge, and before they can recover it, the Goa'uld attack, forcing O'Neill to use the device to download the information to his mind. This has happened before, accidentally, and the team now faces the very real possibility that this time O'Neill's mind will be forever overwritten by the Ancient database, preventing them from ever getting their beloved friend and leader back. On top of that, Anubis is about to attack Earth! O'Neill's actions have allowed the team to hopefully finally find the lost Ancient city of Atlantis, which allow them to once and for all defeat Anubis. The absolute highlight of this episode is a fairly new President is visited in the Oval Office by Anubis, who demands his surrender or the planet will be destroyed. The President, played by William Devane, dismisses Anubis, unless he's prepared to surrender, of course. It's a really great little scene.
For those that just want something hilarious, without necessarily knowing all the context, and/or for those who are veterans of the show, there's probably two episodes that stand out as particularly great amongst the rest. The first, obviously is Window of Opportunity. It's basically Groundhog's Day, but only for O'Neil and Teal'c. It's a very, very glorious episode that allows for all sorts of hi-jinks and fun times. The other is 200, which was the show's 200th episode. It's full of in-jokes and nods to the history of the franchise, and doesn't hesitate to make fun of itself.
That is all
Also...
Posters! Kree!
What, you mean you haven't heard of a single season cartoon from 2002? I'm shocked.
Not canon :P
It ... also has only 8 chevrons on the gate. Like. What the shit is this?
I also would have had Daniel Jackson put in charge of the Atlantis outpost instead of Carter. Maintain civilian leadership, install someone fiercely loyal to SGC, and also have the closest to a subject matter expert on the Ancients in charge.
Maybe the biggest problem with the series was it was too successful and now we’ll never see more in the existing continuity.
Space door?
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1603423
Steam
I will also say that I think by season 3 SG-1 finds its footing pretty well. You get some very solid episodes in that run, and the mythology comes together in the way that defines the series. I wouldn't say they hit their stride yet, but they also hadn't started feeling the fall out of the 4 times they thought the series was going to end only to have to find a way to keep it going at the last minute.
I think getting new content out of the central idea of stargate is difficult though. Like without the old standby villains and the threat of creatures trying to take over the whole galaxy for beings claiming to be gods I'm not sure what there is to explore in the universe consistently. Like that's why SG-1 stands up. It has a central thesis, science vs religion, weak as that theme is its still fairly consistent in its recurrence throughout the series.
I honestly think Christopher judge has a decent idea that you could possibly fit the old formula into while searching for a new overarching thesis. With the jaffa society 10 years on from its liberation and formation into a cohesive society. I think you could use that to get back to a monster/adventure of the week format that occasionally dips back to the central theme.
However I think the way we interact with sci fi television has changed since stargate and there's more expectation of serialization and constant upsets to the status quo that aren't really compatible with the central idea of a Stargate TV show (4 characters going on missions through the gate for exploration and diplomacy that almost always eventually figure out a way to save themselves and everyone else).
Would watch the shit out of this anime
There was definitely a transmigration episode or two throughout it's history
Every major conflict except for the Replicators was basically precipitated by humans blundering into a situation and messing up the established order of things. In fact I would argue S2 of Universe they sorta reverted to this formula and that's when the show really found it's footing.
It Also had a weirdly Trekish undertone of the only real danger to Earth and humanity was ourselves and when we were open to progress, change and peaceful interaction first, there wasn't anything we couldn't accomplish as a species.
About the only thing I would criticize the show for now is the mildly distrustful nature of civilian oversight, but it also 100% predicted the current attitude of the Republican party, so maybe they weren't completely wrong.
I would add to this, another Trek-y aspect, to me at least, is the idea of a military organization that is constantly trying to use diplomacy instead of war (very TNG to me)
That was wild
Not just that, but using diplomacy as a battle tactic essentially. Regularly the reasoning is, "hey apparently daniel has some way we don't have to shoot our way out of this engagement I'm watching form up around us. Let's see if that plan works before we go to the shooting one that we'll probably win at a cost of casualties on our side". It was 4 people with guns that often strove their hardest to not have to use them for lots of different reasons but at least one of them was, "hey shooting engagements are fuckin risky, the less we need to use these things the better, let's find any other solution to this problem"... just so happens every so often that solution is blowing up a sun.
Yeah in l later seasons NID and the IOA were less insidious bad guys and more just annoying bureaucrats and politicians. The IOA was always just that. The NID early on was somewhat insidious under colonel maybourne, stil working towards the goals of earth's defense and supremacy, but through notably despicable means. Then senator kinsey got involved, and shit got real fuckin corrupt. Then at some point there was a purge of the organization and The Trust formed out of the rich folks that had been corrupting the NID. The NID, knowing itself responsible for the genesis of the trust always took special interest when Trust activities popped up.
All in Vancouver, which is why every planet is a pacific redwood forest planet and the desert planets look suspiciously damp.
In retrospect, it's a liiiiittle problematic that the Norse gods turn out to be good guys and all the mediterranean gods are evil, huh
(then again at the end of the series the bad guys are Extremely The Catholic Church so, give and take)
Ask me tomorrow
Messing up the established order yes, but there were also things like aliens who were planning to wipe out all life and start over, who would have done that no matter what the puny humans did, so I'd argue that the worst enemy thing may be overblown.
I'd rather argue that the Ancients were humanity's worst enemy, variously by action, inaction, or negligence.
If you don't remember, that series ended with everyone except Eli frozen in cryosleep and Eli resigned to living the rest of his life alone on the ship with no prospect of rescue.
Eli did have a prospect of joining them it just involved fixing a broken cryochamber
Maybe the Ancients just preferred pacific redwood forest planets and damp deserts?
Can hardly fault them for that.
Could even assume that the only reason that the desert planet in the movie had a gate was because it possessed a rare natural resource that the Ancients required for their technology, unknowingly setting events in motion that would lead to an oppressive theocracy in the future.
That was Anubis (unless there was a second alien race like that, I may have honestly forgotten one), who only really had that as a plan after the humans turned the Dakara device into a galaxy sized weapon against the Replicators via simultaneously dialing every stargate. And the Replicators possibly wouldn't have been quite the threat if SG-1 hadn't straight up lied and betrayed the one human form replicator. Which, in fairness, at the time was probably not the worst call, but still goes back to the overarching theme of peaceful interaction. Up until that point the replicators had been a dangerous, but at least containable threat, albeit a non-societal one. They evolve sapience and a small society/culture, humans immediately fuck with it, and they become an existential galactic threat for everyone.
And Anubis only really got rolling again because SG-1 started knocking off system lords like they were spaces on a bingo card.
Sure, Earth escalates things because they don't know what they're getting into, or because the urgent short-term solution creates a bigger problem down the line. But the problems were there already, and if they hadn't come along, they'd have been no less screwed.