Stargate SG1 show. any fans?
- Thread starter urrutiap
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I can only imagine how you feel about most Trek series then.
I have to say it takes some getting used to, because the movie and the pilot are both so epic and grand and high stakes, and then suddenly you get a long string of these kind of campy standalones. The show takes a while to find an equilibrium, and that leaves it hard for the viewer to manage his or her expectations. It just seems like once in a while the pyramid ships and Goa'uld come back and it’s like, oh yeah! Stargate!! Hard to care as much about the rest.
I feel like I watch shows for extremely different reasons. The TV show took great lengths to establish it would be different from the film, including the question of whether or not Skaara and Sha're could be saved with what happened to Kawalski. The show isn't just 'get Daniel's wife back " but larger possibilities of humanity stepping on to the galactic scene.
^I don't know what I really expected from the show...it probably didn't occur to me that it would get into the larger possibilities, but it also didn't occur to me that it would run for ten years or spawn spin-offs, soooo....
I think I was initially disappointed that there wasn't much reference to Skaara or Sha're for the rest of S1, but I got into it, and coming from TOS and TNG, episodic sci-fi was more the norm than the exception in any case.
I think I was initially disappointed that there wasn't much reference to Skaara or Sha're for the rest of S1, but I got into it, and coming from TOS and TNG, episodic sci-fi was more the norm than the exception in any case.
I think people are misremembering/misunderstanding that SG-1 was supposed to be an episodic series done for a market where the norm was a season with over twenty episodes. If it were done today for a streaming service, then yeah, the first season would probably be eight episodes of Daniel joining the SG-1 team to search for his captured wife while Apophis plots to attack Earth. But with over twenty episodes they needed something else there to fill the time, and given that most of the first season episodes either develop the show's main cast or the series mythology and backstory, or establishing things episodes in later seasons would revisit, there's very little there I would consider "expendable" or "filler."
Yeah, but seasons 2-5 were the same amount of episodic and were just better at it.
I'll go back to what I said earlier: I've always considered the series a reboot of the original movie. As I result, I never went into the show expecting it to always hew close to the ground already covered. In fact, I think the first episode I ever saw had nothing to do with anything from the movie except Jack and Daniel, and my only thought at the time "Holy Crap! There's a Stargate series??? When did that happen??" I never even saw "Children of The Gods" until I rented it on video long after I became a dedicated fan.
So, I always took SG-1 for what it is: A different take on Humans-Exploring-The-Galaxy than what I was used to, namely Star Trek TOS and TNG. (And in some ways I find it better. Please line up. Tomatoes are on your right.) I neither wanted nor needed for the events in the movie to cast a shadow over the series because AFAIC the movie ended just fine, and the showrunners just ended up retconning everything anyway. The stuff related to the movie was just to remind everybody that the producers knew the franchise's pedigree. It was never meant to be the only story the series told, and I'm fine with that.
So, I always took SG-1 for what it is: A different take on Humans-Exploring-The-Galaxy than what I was used to, namely Star Trek TOS and TNG. (And in some ways I find it better. Please line up. Tomatoes are on your right.) I neither wanted nor needed for the events in the movie to cast a shadow over the series because AFAIC the movie ended just fine, and the showrunners just ended up retconning everything anyway. The stuff related to the movie was just to remind everybody that the producers knew the franchise's pedigree. It was never meant to be the only story the series told, and I'm fine with that.
While I don't agree that they retconned everything I do think they adjusted the mythology to better suit the story they wanted to tell, especially with the Goa'uld.
That said, I 100% agree that they did a better job exploring the planet of the week than TNG did and sometimes TOS. Largely because they utilized the Goa'uld and Asgard aliens to explain human style civilizations across the galaxy. By and large, it worked a lot better.
That said, I 100% agree that they did a better job exploring the planet of the week than TNG did and sometimes TOS. Largely because they utilized the Goa'uld and Asgard aliens to explain human style civilizations across the galaxy. By and large, it worked a lot better.
The original movie was generic so-so sci-fi. If the series is a reboot it’s one with a lot more character. O’Neall’s humor and the perfectly balanced ensemble made it so much better.
All they really retconned was “The Stargate only goes one place” and “Ra is the only God parasite”. Which they would have no way of knowing in the movie anyway so doesn’t really contradict anything but their assumptions.
SG1 hit its stride when it got into the pattern of taking common sci-fi tropes and applying their refreshingly human comic relief tone to it. In season 1 it was mostly about meeting natives and having to convince them they are wrong about things as a deadly threat descends on them.
All they really retconned was “The Stargate only goes one place” and “Ra is the only God parasite”. Which they would have no way of knowing in the movie anyway so doesn’t really contradict anything but their assumptions.
SG1 hit its stride when it got into the pattern of taking common sci-fi tropes and applying their refreshingly human comic relief tone to it. In season 1 it was mostly about meeting natives and having to convince them they are wrong about things as a deadly threat descends on them.
Well, they needed the humor for a show to go forward, and O'Neill didn't need to be the straight man like he was in the film, since Teal'c filled that role.
I don't agree about the movie but I agree about the series ensemble.
You forgot the "across the known universe" part, which the series retconned to "galaxy."
Yes, a humanoid parasitic lifeform, not a predator mouthed eel.
Actually, Daniel read Ra's whole story to the others from the secret writings in the caves they hid out in, and as far as those writings were concerned, Ra was the only God parasite. The series had to invent others because Ra got nuked in the end.
And while we're listing stuff, Ra's servants and soldiers were just humans, not incubators for predator mouthed eels. Ra, his servants and the Abydonians all spoke a modified form of ancient Egyptian, not "Goa'uld," which sounds like a modified form of Klingon. The episode where Catherine Langford lost her husband retconned the idea that they couldn't activate the Stargate before Daniel translated the cover stone inscriptions (and they did the same thing with that web series). Daniel's wife's name was Shau'ri, (which fit the movie Egyptian), not Sha're (which fits the modified Klingon.) Somebody mentioned up the thread about not seeing participation from other services besides the Air Force, but in the conference room in the movie it's easy to see all the services are well represented.
And just to be really nitpicky, in the movie the Stargate chevrons didn't light up. That made it look more ancient. In the series they added lights just make it easier to tell it was activated.
That's fair. I just think it didn't take all that long to hit that stride.
And even then, IIRC, there was a deleted scene in the movie indicating the Stargate could probably go other places as well.
I think the humor was something Richard Dean Anderson himself insisted on. And the show is better for it.
My favourite bit of VAM from the DVDs was an interview with RDA where they asked him a question about why he thought the humour was so important and his response was to play a circus tune from his iPod, while keeping the straightest face imaginable.
That's how I live my life.
I do pretty much the same thing.
I just watched the movie again not long ago. In the movie it is specified that Ra's PEOPLE were dying, until Ra found Earth.
Here's the clip.
Ra is not the only survivor of his species in the movie, he's just the only one we see. This is not a retcon. Likely other members of his race would have been encountered in the sequels.
I think the TV show producers took the "like a parasite" line a little literally when making the TV show versions, but there is nothing in the movie to contradict the Goa'ulds natural appearance in the show either. There's no reason the Alien form we see has to be the original Goa'uld form - it's is just a visual representations of Daniel telling the story (Daniel doesn't know what the Goa'uld look like) and even if the flash is true, there's no reason not to suspect that's not just another host body, one that's failing.
There were two more movies planned that Emmerich and Devlin kept attempting to start once in awhile, most recently around the time of the Independence Day sequel. However, with that bombing, the Stargate sequels were completely abandoned. Emmerich confirmed this in the last week doing press for Moonfall.
Here's the clip.
Ra is not the only survivor of his species in the movie, he's just the only one we see. This is not a retcon. Likely other members of his race would have been encountered in the sequels.
I think the TV show producers took the "like a parasite" line a little literally when making the TV show versions, but there is nothing in the movie to contradict the Goa'ulds natural appearance in the show either. There's no reason the Alien form we see has to be the original Goa'uld form - it's is just a visual representations of Daniel telling the story (Daniel doesn't know what the Goa'uld look like) and even if the flash is true, there's no reason not to suspect that's not just another host body, one that's failing.
There were two more movies planned that Emmerich and Devlin kept attempting to start once in awhile, most recently around the time of the Independence Day sequel. However, with that bombing, the Stargate sequels were completely abandoned. Emmerich confirmed this in the last week doing press for Moonfall.
That is how one of the RPG guides took it was that Ra's form was actually an Asgard whom he had posessed before taking the human. Still an odd visual but it can be made to work.
It's been forever, but I remember the SG1 team encountering other Aliens that T'ealc reveals were also used as hosts for the Goa'uld before humans but didn't work as well, so the show supports multiple different species as hosts.
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