Back in 1994, a science fiction movie from the team of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich called Stargate was released. Starring Kurt Russell, well settled into his post-Escape from New York action-hero phase, James Spader, a hip young actor who blew the world away in sex, lies, and videotape, and Jaye Davidson, fresh off his OMG, SPOILERS! turn in The Crying Game, the movie was something less than a howling success. Devlin and Emmerich reworked their planned sequel into a separate film (Independence Day), and were so unconcerned with this particular property that they sold the rights to do a TV show and didn’t even require that the series credit them or their movie as the basis of the series.
In 1997, Stargate SG-1 debuted on Showtime. Spinning out of the movie, it recast with a post-MacGyver Richard Dean Anderson as O’Neill and Canadian actor Michael Shanks as Jackson, and added Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge, and Don S. Davis. The show lasted five seasons on Showtime, and then was picked up by SyFy (then called the Sci-Fi Channel), for which it was a huge hit, prompting two spinoffs, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. When SG-1 ended after ten seasons, it prompted two direct-to-DVD movies.
Not bad for a spinoff of a failed movie, huh?
The Stargate franchise is far too sprawling to do a full-on episode-by-episode rewatch, but I thought it would be fun to do a seasonal rewatch, which will still take up 19 weeks of time. We’ll start this coming Friday with the original Stargate movie, then do each of the ten seasons of SG-1, the five seasons of Atlantis, the two seasons of Universe, and each of the SG-1 films, The Ark of Truth and Continuum. We’ll go chronologically, though, so season 8 of SG-1 will be followed by season 1 of Atlantis, then SG-1 season 9, Atlantis season 2, SG-1 season 10, Atlantis season 3, The Ark of Truth, Atlantis season 4, Continuum, Atlantis season 5, and ending with Universe seasons 1 & 2.
This rewatch will be a bit more freeform than the various Star Trek rewatches I’ve done for this site, though I’ll still be doing different categories and stuff. Among them will be:
Mission briefing: A summary of what happened in the season.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Some favorite technobabble.
Wayward home for out-of-work genre actors: Many folks famous from other science fiction and fantasy shows have shown up on Stargate, from Armin Shimerman, Marina Sirtis, and Peter Wingfield in SG-1 to Mitch Pileggi, Connor Trineer, and Jewel Staite in Atlantis.
Best episode of the season: Self-explanatory.
Worst episode of the season: Ditto.
Characters will also get their own sections. For SG-1, it’ll probably be “For crying out loud” for O’Neill, “Space monkey” for Jackson, “I’ve got an idea, sir” for Carter, “Indeed” for Teal’c, and “You have a go” for Hammond. However, the only one of those I’m married to is “Indeed,” so other suggestions in the comments are welcome. Supporting characters such as Bra’tac, Frasier, Jacob Carter, and Thor (among others) may get their own categories, too.
Chevron seven locked: An overall review of the season.
As I said, this will be more freeform than the others, so there may be variations here and there.
So dial it up, and get ready to head through the gate…
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written an SG-1 short story called “Time Keeps on Slippin’,” which appeared in the Far Horizons anthology in 2014. His SG-1 novel Kali’s Wrath is scheduled to be out later this year.
