Stargate SG-1

 

            Paramount had Star Trek so MGM had to come up with something for the small screen, and the chosen one was Stargate. I went to the cinema all those years ago (1994) to see the original film and it was most enjoyable and a concept which picked at my one track sci-fi mind. Then they brought out the TV series, although the first idea was to make the film into a trilogy but it appears that Godzilla was a better and more fun idea for the director of the original film, Roland Emmerich. The TV version was supposed to follow on from the film in more or less the same line but there were quite a few changes. Obviously, Kirk Russell wasn’t going to tie himself down to a TV show so MacGyver (Richard Dean Anderson) was brought into replace the old Colonel O’Neil (which also got re-spelt to O’Neill for some mind boggling reason) and somehow in the years absence he had grown a sense of humour. Michael Shanks came in for James Spader as Daniel Jackson, with longer hair and bigger and geekier glasses, but unfortunately Shanks never really convinced with the sneezing as Spader had. There were also new characters to keep the plot moving along, Daniel Jackson had got hitched whilst he was away on the planet Abydos, and who wouldn’t? In the first episode she is dutifully written out apart from a few mentions and Jackson forgets her pretty quickly, quite a typical marriage really. Amanda Tapping plays what seem to be three roles as she is sometimes referred to as Doctor Carter or Captain Carter and even Sam, depending on whether she’s looking at a test-tube, carrying a gun or being sexy. Furthermore, Christopher Judge comes in and fills the screen with his biceps.

            The series goes through ten (well, nine and a half) seasons very well and the cast stays pretty constant until season 6 when the changes start, as with all long running series. Getting your atoms transported across the galaxy always tires out any actor and they move on to the retirement home for molecularly jumbled.  SG-1 was the baby of MGM who spent a reported million dollars plus on each episode and the truth is that you notice every dollar. The special effects are good and the story lines are interesting as they get stuck in moral problems on differing planets. Basically it’s Star Trek without the phasers and refreshingly, almost all the inhabitants of the planets they visit are less developed than we are. Good to be bee’s knees for once!

 

The Plot

           It’s all pretty simple. A ring shaped artifact (stargate) is found at Giza in 1928 and some bright spark (Dr Catherine Langford) seems to think it’s of some importance so she hires a loose cannon Egyptologist  to decipher the symbols on it. Our loose cannon turns out to be right about his theory of the Stargate Mythos and quickly unravels the truths of the stargate hidden from us for thousands of years whilst sneezing from allergies, a true genius. It is discovered that the stargate is a gate to the stars, hence the name stargate, really! So there’s a stargate that goes to other planets so obviously our heroes have to jump in it straight away to see where the hell it goes. Jackson and O’Neil trip through the stargate in an expedition to the planet Abydos to see if the planet was a danger to the Earth or not. In the film there were only two stargates, but that would be pretty boring in a TV series so a new map of stargates were explained in. Anyway, off goes the expedition with orders to blow up the stargate if Abydos poses a threat, good old gun-ho tactics.

            No film is complete without a baddie and Stargate is no exception. The bad guy is non other than an alien posing as the Egyptian sun god Ra. Now this just can’t be, so Jackson and company set about bringing down the god and setting the people he has enslaved on Abydos free. Of course the people are more than grateful when they are eventually freed and Jackson marries one of them as he’s got nothing better to do back on Earth and decides to stay. Hereth starts the TV series with a few convenient changes for the smaller budget.

 

Stargate Atlantis