Stargate SG-1: The Good, the Bad and The Ugly

[Ragitsu]

It was only a matter of time, eh?

In my opinion, this show peaked in Season 5...although it was still definitely watchable in Season 6. Starting with Season 7, however...the number of Earth/N.I.D. episodes were ramped up, space battles became more frequent and Richard Dean Anderson (the cast's linchpin) began his slow departure from Stargate SG-1. If anyone here wishes to touch on Seasons 7 through 10, feel free to do so; I find that - even though there is still good material to be had - there's too much dross to push through to make them worth analyzing. I could speak at length about many episodes, but I'll limit myself to five per season so that others have a chance to bring up their favorites.

Season 1 ->

"The First Commandment" - The first of the "SG team member goes rogue" episodes and it's a fine offering. In retrospect, it is odd seeing Eric Matthews playing the bad guy.

"The Nox" - It was interesting seeing an advanced race that doesn't rely on overt electronics or flashy displays of power. Also, humans get humbled in a big way.

"The Torment of Tantalus" - The drive to acquire knowledge can sometimes blind us to the treasure we already possess.

"Tin Man" - Twenty-three years later and the twist is still a strong gut punch.

"There But for the Grace of God" - I'm a sucker for alternative reality scenarios. Fortunately, this was a solid first outing for Stargate SG-1.

Season 2 ->

"The Gamekeeper" - Virtual reality, character development and Dwight Schultz? Yes, please!

"Message in a Bottle" - A microbial hive-mind alien species was and still is a fascinating concept.

"Bane" - This is more-or-less a B-horror story, but I like the idea of finding a dead civilization that was undone by monstrous insects with a disturbing reproductive method.

"A Matter of Time" - I enjoyed the depiction of time dilation. We find out more about O'Neill's past via another military officer.

"1969" - A time travel story done right; there are no plot holes that I can recall. By the way...whoever played the past Major (Thornbird) did a fantastic job depicting a 1960s military man.

Season 3 ->

"Learning Curve" - Here is a radically different society that genuinely believes their actions are good. I like that the other (non-Earth) perspective wasn't portrayed as malicious. This is the first appearance of the naquadah reactor (it eventually becomes a staple of SGC off-world operations).

"Deadman Switch" - Aris Boch was a fun character. The part where O'Neill casually leans on the center console of the scout ship and equally casually asks Daniel to come over so he can examine the active self-destruct mechanism always makes me grin.

"Foothold" - It was incredible that the aliens remained incomprehensible! We never understood their final message and we never learn anything about them.

"New Ground" - The head bad guy is Bruce Campbell-lite and quite good as a fanatic.

"Nemesis" - SG-1 finally encounters their "Borg". Much like the the Borg, the Replicators would eventually be watered down, but they were unquestionably terrifying in their first appearance.

Season 4 ->

"The Other Side" - SG-1 nearly allies themselves with space Nazis. The final scene - O'Neill letting Hitler of another world splat against the Iris - reminds us how ruthless he can be when the stakes are high enough...yet I get the sense that he was also quietly furious at being duped into killing people.

"Window of Opportunity" - O'Neill and Teal'c have their Groundhog Day. A fun episode all-around.

"Scorched Earth" - Another non-malicious alien species presents SG-1 with a conundrum that is solved by a third option proposed by Daniel: a simple conversation.

"2010" - A "bad future" caused by a deceptive species no less dangerous than the Goa'uld. The ending is truly bittersweet.

"Entity" - An energy/computer-based life threatens the SG-1 because it misunderstood an attempt at communication to be an attack. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy aliens that are truly alien?

Season 5 ->

"Enemies" - This is one of the strongest season openers of any television show. Apophis' impotent scream as he goes down with the ship was the proverbial icing on the cake.

"The Fifth Man" - Here is an episode that isn't going to win any awards, but is still enjoyable. I liked the actor that played "Tyler"; he did well with Richard Dean Anderson. The closeup of Tyler's true form still looks good today.

"Beast of Burden" - Humans are bastards to another species. The thing of it is, you come to understand why their society ended up in its present state. It was nice seeing Daniel putting his cultural/linguistic skills to work in field conditions.

"2001" - We get to see "our" SG-1 slowly discover the horror of the Aschen. Even though the viewer already knows how fiendish they can be, the reveal nevertheless comes across as unsettling.

"Sterility."

"Menace" - Wow! Who knew someone so innocent could be the progenitor of a galactic scourge? O'Neill once again shows that he can be ruthless and Daniel cuts loose by calling him an SOB. Apparently, this episode was shot around the time of the World Trade Center attacks and you can see some cast members appearing subtly distraught in the background.

Season 6 ->

"Descent" - I consider this the true season opener for Season 6. Corin Nemec turns in a great performance as Jonas Quinn. The sequence where he has to swim through a flooded ship to restart the power left me on the edge of my seat. The effects of the "rings" teleporting the water was done well.

"Allegiance" - The chaos and paranoia that one assassin cloaked by invisibility caused was impressive. What's even more impressive is how the Jaffa and Tok'ra come together to take down a common enemy.

"Cure" - I think this episode could have played up the moral dilemma a little more strongly. On the whole, however, it is a great bit of exploration on the morality of exploiting an enemy...or at least a perceived enemy.

"Unnatural Selection" - We see the next stage of Replicator evolution. They lose some of their inhuman implacability but gain a level of sophistication that escalates the threat they pose. Sam betraying the trust of a particular Human Form Replicator always struck me as slightly out of character.

"Forsaken" - A solid reversal of the typically expected good guys and bad guys.

[Sundog]

To me, the best episode of SG1 was the episode with the battle of Antarctica. For seasons humanity had been building up to resist a Goa'uld incursion, and in this case, pretty much for the first time, they do - not with tricks or special forces commandoes, but with sufficient military force.

 

[Ragitsu]

13 minutes ago, Sundog said:

To me, the best episode of SG1 was the episode with the battle of Antarctica. For seasons humanity had been building up to resist a Goa'uld incursion, and in this case, pretty much for the first time, they do - not with tricks or special forces commandoes, but with sufficient military force.

 

 

That was also how Stargate Atlantis was born.

[Greywind]

Michael Shanks still finds the replicators terrifying.

[archer]

I thought it took a turn for the worse when the doctor left the show. It closed off a lot of potential storylines to not have a doctor as a major character.

 

I really enjoyed the scenes in the cafeteria. I don't know if that was the regular place where everyone eats for free or if it was supposed to be more of an officer's club. But I do know that it looked like the people there ate better than I was on whichever day I was watching. (I tend to eat a lot of my own "cooking".)

 

It doesn't make sense to me that they didn't send an ATV or a scaled down jeep through the gate fairly regularly. I can see the noise from it being a detriment in most cases in contested or unknown territory. But when you really need to get somewhere quickly or need to move heavy equipment, there's a reason why we use motorized vehicles. SG-1 itself wouldn't use one on their first contact their missions. But after contact is made and what's being investigated isn't at the gate, they needed vehicles being at least an option. In the Stargate cartoon series, the team members used ATV's which I thought was an upgrade.

 

The show established that the gate was unbreakable and portable. And that there was a shaft from the gate room all the way to the surface. I thought it would have been interesting to lay the gate flat against the shaft then drop a lead cannonball the size of the gate from the surface right through the open gate. I don't know how deep the gate room is supposed to be but the cannonball would be going through with a hell of a lot of momentum, would make a terrific visual, and would make for a great distraction for a team going into a hot situation.

 

Cheyenne Mountain is known for having, on the surface, those huge heavy doors which can withstand a nuclear blast. I really thought they should have had something similar for the gate room. I know they wanted to write stories where the humans could easily lose control of the situation to invading aliens. But after the first two or three times, they should have upgraded security significantly...and in so many different ways.

[Greywind]

I thought it funny that Jonas had to point out how they originally got the gate into the mountain so they could get it back out before it blew up.

[Ragitsu]

3 minutes ago, Greywind said:

I thought it funny that Jonas had to point out how they originally got the gate into the mountain so they could get it back out before it blew up.

 

Which episode was that?

[archer]

11 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Which episode was that?

 

It was the one before we had to buy a replacement Stargate from the Russians.  

[Ragitsu]

27 minutes ago, archer said:

I thought it took a turn for the worse when the doctor left the show. It closed off a lot of potential storylines to not have a doctor as a major character.

 

Janet Fraiser? I liked her. She was one of the few base personnel that could squarely stand up to Jack's stubbornness without resorting to sarcasm.

 

27 minutes ago, archer said:

It doesn't make sense to me that they didn't send an ATV or a scaled down jeep through the gate fairly regularly. I can see the noise from it being a detriment in most cases in contested or unknown territory. But when you really need to get somewhere quickly or need to move heavy equipment, there's a reason why we use motorized vehicles. SG-1 itself wouldn't use one on their first contact their missions. But after contact is made and what's being investigated isn't at the gate, they needed vehicles being at least an option. In the Stargate cartoon series, the team members used ATV's which I thought was an upgrade.

 

I've seen similar suggestions before. There are two out-of-story reasons that have been brought up with some regularity: limited budget and a desire to keep the show human-centric.

 

  

8 minutes ago, archer said:

 

It was the one before we had to buy a replacement Stargate from the Russians.  

 

Speaking of which...holy crap did someone in production or on the writer's team have it out for Russians. The "Russian bad guy" angle grew tiring after a while. On the other hand, the fact that O'Neill was mildly racist towards them makes sense given his background and makes him more of a well-rounded character: the man has his flaws.

[archer]

12 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

 

Speaking of which...holy crap did someone in production or on the writer's team have it out for Russians. The "Russian bad guy" angle grew tiring after a while. On the other hand, the fact that O'Neill was mildly racist towards them makes sense given his background and makes him more of a well-rounded character: the man has his flaws.

 

Well, they were mostly dealing with Russian military officers who were politically trusted enough to be let in on the existence of the Stargate. Given the era, it was likely that most of them had to have started their careers under the communist regime. So I can see Jack's attitude...and the attitude of the US military toward trusting the Russians...and why the Russian military was always looking for an angle to exploit. 

 

If the Russian military was the one which originally had the Stargate in that era, I can't believe that the US military wouldn't be trying to get access, technology, their own SG team at the Russian base, and all the rest of it.

[Greywind]

The Russians never had a stargate until they salvaged it. They had the DHD for the original gate from Egypt.

[Starlord]

I liked the movie.

[Ragitsu]

46 minutes ago, Starlord said:

I liked the movie.

 

"Give my regards to King Tut, ass****."

[death tribble]

I have only ever seen the movie and only bits and pieces of the series do I cannot say what was a good episode. I apologise to all of my fans and the board readers who awaited my thoughts with a mixture of awe and excitement.

[Ragitsu]

16 minutes ago, death tribble said:

I have only ever seen the movie and only bits and pieces of the series do I cannot say what was a good episode. I apologise to all of my fans and the board readers who awaited my thoughts with a mixture of awe and excitement.

 

Not to worry: there are roughly five million more of you queuing up to share their opinions.

[Pariah]

22 minutes ago, death tribble said:

I apologise to all of my fans and the board readers who awaited my thoughts with a mixture of awe and excitement.

 

We're both so disappointed.

 

[Pariah]

So far there's been a lot of discussion about the good, limited discussion about the bad. But if we're going to talk about Stargate SG-1 and The Ugly, there's really only one thing that needs to be said:

 

"I'm an Air Force officer just like you are, Colonel. And just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside doesn't mean I can't handle whatever you can handle."

[Ragitsu]

25 minutes ago, Pariah said:

So far there's been a lot of discussion about the good, limited discussion about the bad. But if we're going to talk about Stargate SG-1 and The Ugly, there's really only one thing that needs to be said:

 

"I'm an Air Force officer just like you are, Colonel. And just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside doesn't mean I can't handle whatever you can handle."

 

That is heavy-handed 1990s feminism, basically. Early seasons of J.A.G. weren't much better.

[Hermit]

Stargate , what Stargate? No such thing I'm sure...

now, there was that amazing cult classic "Wormhole X-Treme!" Which had some really good consultants

[Greywind]

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

 

We're both so disappointed.

 

 

That many?

10 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Which episode was that?

 

Redemption

 

S6 pilot 2-parter.

[Ragitsu]

6 hours ago, Hermit said:

Stargate , what Stargate? No such thing I'm sure...

now, there was that amazing cult classic "Wormhole X-Treme!" Which had some really good consultants

 

There was a late season episode where some of the cast poke fun at Farscape.

[Pariah]

One of the great things about SG-1 was that after some initial misfires in the first season, they learned not to take themselves too seriously. Sure, there was real drama and Incredibly high stakes, but the series never lost its sense of fun. Never is that more apparent then in the 10th season episode 200 (referenced immediately above) where the writers, cast, and crew collectively seem to say, "What fourth wall?"

[death tribble]

6 hours ago, Greywind said:

That many ?

Like that is it ?

 

and

 

 

[Matt the Bruins]

"I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode."

[death tribble]

3 hours ago, Matt the Bruins said:

"I do not understand why everything in this script must inevitably explode."

Because it is a Michael Bay movie ?