Goodbye, "Stargate SG-1"
Early last year, at the encouragement of a buddy of mine, I decided that I would watch from start to finish the entire series of "Stargate SG-1". I had seen the movie, but thought that it was a bit mediocre, but before new episodes of "Battlestar Galactica", I would catch the occasional SG-1 or Atlantis episode. Before I began watching the show, my primary question was, "How does the U.S. Air Force go from contemporary technology like the F-22 Raptor to faster-than-light space carriers sporting shields and transporters and other sci-fi goodies?" The first episode of SG-1 begins with the Air Force beginning to use the Stargate once more. The final episode ten seasons later has that same Air Force traveling between galaxies and defending the Milky Way from beings a smidgen less powerful than gods.
Make no mistake, "Stargate SG-1" may be my favorite science fiction series of all time. The strength of the series is the mythology and incremental history built episode by episode that explains puny Earthlings end up being the fifth race of beings devoted to protecting and defending countless worlds. My favorite episode that illustrates the incremental construction of this history is "Prometheus". In this episode, a journalist begins confronting members of SG-1 about a top-secret government project and Stargate Command has to deal with the situation. The show writers very cleverly manipulate the viewer into believing that the project in question is the Stargate program, but in a surprise twist, we find out for the first time that US gov't has been building the first generation interstellar warship built upon technology and knowledge gained by the Stargate teams during their various journeys to other worlds. This episode is the point where the fictitious world sharply diverged from the non-fictitious world. It was an abrupt revelation, but one that made sense when considered. Richard Dean Anderson and team weren't mixing it up with otherworlders for kicks and giggles.
The second strength of the show was it's cast and how well the ensemble worked. In the first eight seasons, Richard Dean Anderson was the core of the group in his role as Colonel Jack O'Neill. He played the role with the right mixture of seriousness and levity. As a friend of mine remarked, he was never without an appropriate smart-ass remark when needed. After eight seasons, his character was promoted and he left the show. The first few episodes following his departure felt a bit rudderless, but the new additions of Ben Browder and Claudia Black playing the roles of Cameron Mitchell and Vala Mal Doran. In some respects, these characters both embodied parts of what made Anderson's character so interesting, but they also grew into respectable characters in their own right. If I were forced to choose my favorite incarnation of SG-1, the O'Neill team would only narrowly edge out the Mitchell team that finished this last season.
In the end, I managed to extract a lot of enjoyment out of this show. I've picked up most of the DVDs and they are now a central part of my video collection. I often joke that I'm looking forward senility - that way, I can watch all of my DVDs again as if it were the first time. I'd better make a note for my future self to check out "SG-1" first. In the meantime, there's going to be a big hole that's tough to fill.
