Farewell to SciFi Channel’s Stargate:SGI
The concept of Stargate: SG1 actually began in a feature motion picture, starring Kirk Russell and Boston Legal’s James Spader. The premise was that some time in the late 1920s, an archeologist discovered an advanced alien artifact buried in the sands of Egypt. About seventy years later, the artifact was seen tucked away in a top secret US government facility where scientists and military types were probing its secrets.
Enter Dr. Daniel Jackson, played by Spader in the movie and Michael Shanks in the TV series. Dr. Jackson was a historian/archeologist with decidedly odd views about early human history. Alien beings, posing as gods, had influenced much of early human history, according to Dr. Jackson. A lot of these ideas were related in a book that was big in the early 1970s, Chariots of the Gods. Naturally, the history/archeology establishment thought Dr. Jackson was a little mad. Dr. Jackson, at the beginning of the film, had lost his teaching position, his grants, and very shortly would be losing his apartment for nonpayment of rent.
Fortunately, Dr. Jackson was recruited by the secret government folks for his expertise in ancient languages. Within a week, Dr. Jackson had translated the markings on the artifact and had discovered that it was a Stargate, a device that opened a wormhole passage to other Stargates throughout the galaxy, depending on a sequence of codes dialed in.
The movie proceeded with an expedition to a planet called Abydos inhabited by a society of humans, descended from ancient Egyptians kidnapped from Earth thousands of years ago. The humans were lorded order by Ra (yes, that Ra.) Ra was not an actual god, but was a snake-like parasite called a Goa’uld, inhabiting a human being and pretending to be a god. Ra had an army of toughs called the Jaffa, who wore armor, carried beam weapons the size and shape of quarter staffs, and occasionally tooled around in aircraft called Death Gliders.
The expedition was commanded by Colonel Jack O’Neil, played in the movie by Russell, in the TV show by MacGyver’s Richard Dean Anderson. O’Neil had his own problems, being suicidal due to the accidental death of his son. Before the movie was over, the mainly military expedition liberated the humans and snuffed Ra with a nuclear weapon. Dr. Jackson got the girl.
The TV series picked up where the movie left off. O’Neil and Jackson were joined by Captain/Dr. Samantha Carter, a scientist who was equal parts beauty and brains, played by Amanda Tapping, and T’eal’c, a Jaffa warrior, played by Christopher Judge, who had decided that being a an enforcer for his Goa’uld master, a piece of work named Apothos, was not for him.
Every week, the SG1 team would travel to a new planet and get into and out of trouble. Sometimes this trouble would involve run ins with the Goa’uld. Other times the trouble would involve some kind of phenomenon on the planet of the type familiar with fans of Star Trek.
Along the way, other aliens were introduced. There were other Goa’uld, not all of them “Egyptian.” It also turned out that the Norse gods were (a) friendly, (b) short, gray skinned folks (not tall and red or blond haired) of the type that some people think abduct people and perform disgusting experiments on them, and (c) call themselves, naturally, the Asgard.
There were some friendly versions of the Goa’uld, called the Tok’ra. Samantha Carter’s dad, a crusty old Air Force General, became one of them when he accepted a symbiot. General Carter showed up, under the impression that his darling daughter was working on a boring radar project, with an offer of a flight on the space shuttle. He could not understand why Sam, who had always been a little space crazy, was less than enthusiastic. It was only later that he discovered that his little girl had been vamping about the universe, fighting aliens, and discovering new knowledge.
Eventually the Goa’uld became too stale as villains. After all, once we got our own star ships and blaster weapons, they weren’t really much of a threat. Their ground combat doctrine, which seemed to consist of a bunch of guys in armor tromping around blasting people, was appalling and tended to crumble when meeting the greatest military force in the Universe, the US military.
First the series came up with a race called the Replicators, a sort of hive-like entity that could consume everything and use the material to create anything. Stargate spent several seasons dealing with them, while still fighting the Goa’uld on the side.
Eventually the Replicators were taken care of with a super weapon. The Goa’uld were overthrown by a combination of humans and Jaffa resistance fighters. Then the Jaffa started to fight among themselves, giving a new definition to cut throat politics.
The SG1 team changed a bit with the semiretirement of Richard Dean Anderson from acting. Colonel O’Neil had become General O’Neil and had become head of Home Planet Security. Colonel Cameron Mitchelll, played by Farscape’s Ben Browder, became the new commander of SG1. Claudia Black, also from Farscape, showed up as the somewhat amoral former Goa’uld Vala. Samantha Carter, now a Colonel, and TeThe crusty but fatherly commander of the SG service, General George Hammond, was replaced by the crusty but fatherly General Henry Landry played by Beau Bridges.
The new alien threat is the Ori, a kind of evil, super aliens who demand that every sentient race worship them. They are aided by converts who are, starting in Season 9, rampaging through the galaxy, conquering planets, and forcing entire populations to convert or die. Think of them as interstellar Al Qaeda with unstoppable weapons.
If the cancellation of Stargate stands, the intrepid SG1 team will have to deal with the Ori in less than a season’s worth of episodes. It is not clear why the show is being cancelled. Stargate seems to have avoided the trap that classic Trek fell into by providing a mechanism to rotate out old actors and characters and introduce new ones. The show could go on another ten or even twenty years.
Speaking of traps from Trek, Stargate has developed a tendency to not view death as a permanent condition. Dr. Jackson “died”, “ascended” into super being status, and then returned to being human. Other dead characters have shown up as different versions from alternate universes.
Stargate does have a spin-off series, Stargate: Atlantis, which depicts a team of scientists, diplomats, and military types in the lost city of Atlantis, which happens to be in a far away galaxy, where they do battle with a race of baddies called the Wraith, who like to “feed” on the lifeforce of humans. Atlantis will continue for the time being, which is something of a comfort.
