SSTFStargate SG1 was so versatile. Somehow it pulled off episodes as different as ‘Heroes’ and ‘200’, with each feeling perfectly at home in the show.
BertramDitore
WindyRebelThis.
I agree with this so much that even understated equines could not remove me.
Teal’c or Data?
That sounds like a fun game
I will never not giggle at the “here, take these guns” meme
I really love the episode where they go “this is a weapon meant to intimidate” * blasts * “this is a weapon meant to kill” fire p90
Such an iconic scene, but I never would have thought that when I first watched it for some reason.
It more or less was the thesis statement of the show up until The Battle of the Antarctic.
The Tau’ri are, technologically, bass ackwards. But whereas the rest of the galaxy has been afraid of space snakes for millennia (? I never actually thought about the timeline and doubt the writers did either, we’ve been doing our own thing… which often involves killing ourselves in ever more efficient ways.
So here we have a bunch of former slaves “waking up” (and let’s not think too much about how many of them were big black actors…), but are still beholden to tradition and fear. And then we have SG-1 basically walk up, get their physically least imposing team member (which actually would be Daniel, but Amanda Tapping is awesome and deserves every scene she got… except maybe the weird boyfriend arc that was just bad), and say “Your gods ain’t shit. Side with us and we’ll fuck them up”.
And that continues through the series. Straight up gods are staring them down and SG-1 just flip them off and unload. Even stuff like Jack and Bra’tac (I think it was those two?) getting ready for a long journey through a mothership that Jack just solves by chucking two grenades in a hole.
The show lost the plot around the time the battleship (Prometheus?) became something that could fight Anubis to a standstill and Atlantis/The Ori had lots of “Those god-like beings ain’t shit. So rather than side with their incredibly powerful alliance you should side with our incredibly powerful alliance”… and I don’t think ANYONE knows what the hell the point of SGU was.
But up until then, it really was about fighting gods and entrenched and toxic traditions with nothing but pluck and 5.7 NATO rounds.
I actually liked the premise of the Ori because basically up to that point they were fighting people who claimed to be gods but were really just aliens with advanced technology, whereas with the Ori they were fighting beings that basically were gods so it was a whole lot harder to convince anyone to side with them. The biggest problem I had with it was that the show seemed to run out of money before they could properly tie everything up, a bit reminiscent of the final season of the Expanse (over which I am still very bitter, though at least it motivated me to read the books, which do satisfyingly tie everything up). In particular, in the episode
spoilerwhere they kill all of the Ori by sending the bomb thing through the portal
they have basically a huge dramatic victory that merited some kind of visually impressive spectacle and instead all that happened was basically that they just turned to each other and said, “Well, so I guess that means we succeeded. Yay.”
I didn’t like the Ori arc at first and found those seasons hard to watch. On my rewatch though I found 9 and 10 much better than I remembered.
HALLOWED ARE THE ORI
They are much better than they should be. Black and Browder are good and the writers seem to have had done very excellence job basically writing a spin off.
They’ve got some outstanding moments too. Rescuing carter after the battle of the supergate when she was EV is one of my favorite scenes in the series.
Col Mitchell has a great line during that battle I think, ‘this is gonna be one of those days when one nuke isn’t enough’ lmfao…
Vala at one point says ‘the last time I was this bored I took hostages’ etc.
‘You’re in the desert and come across a turtle on its back and you don’t help it. Why? Because I am a turtle too.’
I didn’t mean to shamelessly throw quotes at you but there’s so much, plenty of magic in those seasons. Good way to ween yourself off SG-1 after binging eight seasons lol
Hey I liked Pete he seemed nice!
He had good taste in boxed wine
It’s the one Teal’c kills Imhotep?
spoiler alert, dude ;)
SwedneckMy favourite detail in that is when —i think it’s Jack— gets a bit lax with gun safety and waves his rifle at Sam, and she visibly flinches.
My favorite detail, though I will admit that type of detail (and I think I’ve seen it a couple times) is fun: when people express hatred for Daniel.
Fuck Daniel.
That was richard dean anderson who was lax gun safety, and a very real reaction from amanda tapping if anyone cares
FuglyDuckEvery one of Jack’s comments following a complicated explanation from somebody. “So… we’re gonna blow it up?”
got a chuckle out of me
Fun fact: the 5.7mm round the P90 uses was not being produced as a blank. So the armorers bought TONS of live 5.7mm and made those into blanks.
This actually caused a supply bottleneck for none other than the US Secret Service, who were also using P90s at the time. They actually had to ask, or buy, not sure which, several thousand rounds from the show armorers for training until ammo production could ramp up stateside IIRC.
Imagine if somebody fucked one of those up like they did with the set of Rust…
The fact that they didn’t makes one wonder how much one would have to fuck up to actually end up firing live rounds on set.
That is a very fun fact!
I read it they had trouble getting ammunition for the P90 because of the Iraq war so they switched to different weapons towards the end of the show. I’m not totally sure though I’m too lazy to look it up.
Secret service: “hello, bullet store? Yes, why are our bullets on back order?”
Bullet store: “oh, sorry, the space people bought most of our stock.”
SS: “The… what?”
BS: “The space marine people. They yravel in portals, fight aliens. Yeah they bought like 80% of our ammo”
SS, voice shaking: “Sir please hold for a moment, Im going to have to fetch my supervisor…”
Yes! “This is a weapon of terror. And THIS is a weapon of WAR.” Love me some SG-1 maybe I’ll fire it up later tonight hmm.
It’s ridiculous and over the top but I love every second of it.
“The United States is not in the business of interfering in other people’s affairs”
“Since when Sir?”
Picked up the blu ray set a while back (which weirdly has the gratuitous nudity series premier but none of the finale movies but… okay) and went a bit down memory lane while identifying which episode was which for plex purposes. It really is wild what a massive range the show had. One highlight was the 70s episode where, in a show that was HEAVILY backed by the US military, they basically made it clear that draft dodgers fleeing Vietnam had to do what they felt was right.
Tangential, but I will always say the best Stargate SG-1 game is UFO Aftermath (or Aftershock. One of those). Old school xcom-like with a strong emphasis on a JA2 style selection of guns to greatly increase the time you spend using human guns. But it basically makes every mission feel like a gate that went REALLY bad and you very much get that feeling of “This is a weapon of terror. This is a weapon of war” as energy bolts are exploding all around your soldier who just takes a knee with a rifle.
The show took a lot of shots at the military, but it never dwelled on it. I feel like it took just the right amount.
The uniforms did add a USAF patch on the sleeve in season 5, which is often called the “Area 51 Apology Patch”. Might be seen as cheap brownie points with the military, but it also makes sense within the show, so not immersion breaking.
Been a minute since I did a proper rewatch (hmmm. I DO have all the stuff worth watching on my plex…), but mostly it was just Jack (and later Daniel when Michael Shanks wanted to look like a badass) being flippant and mocking protocol.
Which is pretty normal for US military backed productions and is pretty much exactly what they want propaganda wise. Gibbs on NCIS, Bradley Cooper in the (shockingly okay) A-Team movie, etc.
I don’t think the show suffered for it at all, but there were definitely a few moments over the years of “Okay, if Teal’c starts saying ‘Ecrof ria eht nioj’ I am turning it off”.
NGL, Sam carter was probably my celebrity crush in middle school
You are not alone
Indeed.
The doctor was also one of the crushes for me. She had that friends hot mom feeling in the show.
Always had a thing for redheads. Sam is beautiful and badass but Doc and Hathor…ooof. Growing up watching that it’s no surprise I wound up with a gf who’s got ginger hair and needs the highest SPF
I think we may have a type.
She was definitely hot. I get what you’re saying.
kroldenI love me some warrior scientists.
She’s one of my go-to examples of a “strong female character” that Hollywood has completely fucked up in the last ten years or so. Carter is smart, resourceful, quick on her feet, and more than capable on the battlefield.
But not a superhero who can beat up, say, Teal’c or other Jaffa 3x her size. She’s also very much a woman and exhibits feminine traits accordingly. You know, like how real normal people behave.
Also on the list: Sarah Connor, Dana scully, Laura Roslin, Captain Janeway despite her flaws, a few others…
The perfect blend of action and comedy
I will always remember that one day I skipped school was home sick from school and just happened to catch my first episode of SG1.
Me too!! It was around season 1 or 2 and I remember seeing a few in a row: the episodes stranded in Antarctica, the girl Cassandra with the bomb inside her, maybe the prison escape one idk. I loved it and was instantly hooked.
Next week on Showtime Sci Friday: Richard Dean Anderson stars in an all new Stargate SG-1! Happiest words of my childhood lol
There’s another Colonel O’Neil with only one L, and he has no sense of humor at all
Man, this show was three fries short of a Happy Meal.
WACKO!!
In the middle of my backswing, General?!
haywireSG1 is a show that I feel never made a mistep to the point where I can call out a bad episode. Unlike various star trek series that had their WTF episodes that are generally disliked.
I always hoped for one more piece of the story with the original team, details were floating around of the final movie and I think covid killed that off.
“Emancipation” is pretty fucking cringe.
Fun note, same writer as that terrible TNG episode with the same plot.
Cringe but watchable is still good lol
This is hilariously topical.
I am just getting into the series after having watch the film various times over the years. It really feels a bit, “religion of the week” right now and I am struggling with some of these episodes. I really like the characters but my goodness was that Emancipation episode awful. Would you encourage me to press through?
Absolutely keep going. The first season has a could stinkers. The show finds its groove soon.
Disagree.
I guess I’m the only one who actively hated ‘200’ when it aired.
The show was great, I’ve watched every episode multiple times (except ‘200’).
But there was a very clear quality decrease as time went on, I mean they even started letting Teal’c write a handful of 'em.
There was a puppet episode? Team America Space Police?
Not the whole episode, but yes. The puppets were made by the same people who made the Team America ones.
The episode is wild, the puppet sequence isn’t even the most over the top part.
That whole episode was gold.
Your post has me wanting to do a rewatch of the series. I should see if any of the streaming services I’m on has that series on there.
Sg1 will probably be one of my favourite series ever. But from my perspective it really didn’t age that well. Not talking about graphics or CGI here, but more on a action POV. A few jokes I probably wouldn’t bring today anymore, a few weird decisions regarding the plot and the cast and, because of the episodic character of the show quite a few plot holes.
SGA on the other hand is a great show, which aged just as well and is the one I actually recommend people nowadays if they want to take a look at the franchise.
There’s definitely a lot of 90s jankiness / awkward moments through a more modern lense, but I do think it trails off as the show goes on.