Review of Stargate SG1: Volume 28

Introduction

Television sci-fi is a funny old game. Whenever you invest time in a TV series you take a gamble. With something like Star Trek, you are pretty safe in assuming that any new Trek series that Paramount comes up with will have legs. A programme like the X Files or Buffy without an established fan base was a risk when it first started. If you picked those shows to expend your 45 minutes, then you chose wisely. If on the other hand you invested your precious time in shows like Millennium, Space Above and Beyond, Dark Skies or my own late eighties favourite, Highwayman (obscure reference) then it is often a disappointment when they aren`t renewed year after year. On rare occasions you watch a show and thinking it a flop destined for syndication hell, you leave it expecting never to encounter it again. With me that show was Stargate SG1.

In 1994, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich unleashed a popcorn spectacular that did good business at the box office. It reinvented Egyptian mythology for the X Files generation, with a wondrous and rousing adventure at the other end of the galaxy. The Stargate concept coupled with the Egyptian mythology was a good one though, and the idea of transferring adventurers from planet to planet with the aid of a simple special effect was an economic and tantalising one. A short lived series of novels ensued expanding on the story established in the film, but a couple of years later, Stargate was reborn on the small screen. Stargate SG1 would reunite and reinvent the characters and with a few major tweaks to the back-story would see man boldly going where no-one etc etc.

I watched the first Season of SG1 and dismissed it, thinking it didn`t have the legs to survive in the cutthroat sci-fi TV market. Colour me gob-smacked as it reaches its seventh year this year. I certainly backed the wrong horse. This disc is Volume 28 containing 4 episodes from the middle of Season 6. The summaries are printed above so I won`t repeat them here.

Video

Stargate SG1 gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic picture, which is frankly stunning for a television programme. You`ll never see the programme look this good on TV with a sharp and clear image that is almost cinematic in terms of production value and special effects quality.

Audio

The sound is similarly given special treatment on this disc, boasting DD 5.1 soundtracks in English, German and Spanish. The surrounds are put to good use reproducing the music and the effects and the dialogue is clear at all times. Still being a TV programme, it doesn`t really achieve the standards of a big screen movie. But David Arnold`s theme tune is still there in all its glory.

Features

Television shows are usually laughable in terms of extras. The Star Trek Next Generation boxsets were released only with the most cursory of additional material, and similar treatments are given to many other titles. Up till now, the most impressive titles in terms of extras had been The X Files boxsets, with a decent collection for each season.

I must admit to being impressed with the quality of extras for this first SG1 disc that I have encountered.

Every single episode comes with a Director and crew commentary presented in DD 2.0 Surround. I didn`t have the time to delve into them more than cursorily, but they appeared to be the light hearted anecdotal pieces that fans of the show will take to heart.

Similarly there are short featurettes for Allegiance, Cure and Prometheus focusing on the directors and the behind the scenes footage. There is no similar piece for Unnatural Selection as that too, like Cure was directed by Andy Mikita and I assume that there was no need for repetition. The footage totals 17 minutes and includes some frivolous interjections from the cast and crew as well as focussing on the director in question. These are all subtitled as well.

There are 40 pictures in a stills gallery, presented in the form of a slideshow. There is also a brief advert from Amanda Tapping for the Stargate website.

Finally there is a preview for Volume 29 of the series featuring four trailers for the episodes therein. I thought I was watching the X Men movie again for a couple of them mind.

All this is presented in a well-designed and visually striking set of animated menus.

This is perhaps the most comprehensive set of extras I have yet seen for a television series, and give that even the bad episodes will get lavish commentaries, some might consider it overkill. Either way, the Stargate series sets a high benchmark that most other TV discs can only aspire to.

Conclusion

I stopped watching the Stargate SG1 television series, because I found the first season highly derivate of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Occasionally delving into an episode on Channel 4 did nothing to disabuse me of the notion but I had hoped that the series had developed some individuality by now. Alas these four Season six episodes are just as unoriginal as the ones I first saw.

The biggest disappointment for me with SG1 was that it completely reinvented the mythos that was explored in the movie. If you recall, Ra was the last of a dying race that possessed a primitive human to prolong his life, and created the Egyptian civilisation to worship him. He fled to Abydos when that civilisation rebelled and the events of the film ensued. That back-story was jettisoned in favour of a race of worms that enter into a symbiotic relationship with their human hosts (Cough, Star Trek!) These beings have transplanted humans all over the galaxy and rule over them with a steel fist.

The characters were of necessity changed as well. In the movie Colonel O`Neill was a man with a death wish, wracked with guilt over the loss of his son. That character wouldn`t last long in a weekly TV series, so instead we get MacGyver. Daniel Jackson also changed from an eccentric absent-minded professor with travel allergies to the Spock of the outfit. Well half a Spock really, concentrating on history and linguistics. The other scientist half came from the character of Carter who is able to spout technobabble at the drop of a hat. So with the intrepid Captain MacGyver and the gestalt Spock installed in the team, all that was required was some muscle. Enter Teal`c or Worf lite, sporting a pretzel on his head instead of a Cornish Pasty. Daniel Jackson isn`t in these episodes, having been replaced by a new character Jonas Quinn, who is identical in all but appearance.

The Stargate functions essentially as a transporter beam, taking our landing party from world to world without the need for pesky starships, each week our brave landing party face a new bunch of transplanted humans, who have evolved a slightly different civilisation that all look like a bygone civilisation of our own history (I guess it saves on the Cornish Pasty budget), and they face a familiar Trek like moral problem. Later on into the series, they remembered that space battles are cool, and the occasional space ship began to make an appearance along with other alien races and factions.

I first read a couple of episode guides to catch up and get to grips with the back-story to the following episodes.

Allegiance sees the renegade Jaffa and the Tok`ra facing off on the refugee world of Alpha. The two groups don`t trust each other and when the killings begin, MacGyver has a hard time keeping the peace. Forget the blurb, this episode is a remake of Predator, down to the assassin viewpoint, the incidental music and even the dialogue. "If it bleeds, we can kill it" becomes "If we can see it, we can shoot it". There is even a nifty bit of bullet time.

Cure is the quintessential Star Trek episode, showing first contact with a new world. In exchange for a miraculous panacea, the aliens ask for some strategically sensitive information. But the wonder drug has some nasty side effects, as well as an ominous origin. Moral choices abound as the story twists and turns to make quite an effective episode.

Prometheus follows on from a prior episode as a tenacious reporter stumbles on one of those top-secret government projects that always get stumbled upon. Carter and Quinn get to conduct the press tour, but the camera team are terrorists who try and hijack the secret government project. What ensues is Die Hard on a spaceship, as Carter faces off against the bad guys. MacGyver and Worf lite get on board in time to save the day, but the ship goes to warp, I mean hyperspace before they can stop it. Essentially this episode has been build up for…

Unnatural Selection. A slimy muppet beams aboard the ship asking for help against the Replicators. (Borg by another name) The Asgard have been overrun by the machines and need the help of some morons to save the day. Mind you, this episode has a funny Star Trek joke.

Still hopelessly derivative, most Stargate episodes come across as the sort of fanfic that populates the Internet. Very few of them possess original ideas and most are tacky indeed. The acting isn`t always of the highest quality either, especially from the supporting cast, although the four main actors constantly give solid performances. I`ll always think of Richard Dean Anderson as MacGyver, hence my facetiousness earlier, but it is his interpretation of O`Neill that lifts this TV series above the mundane. O`Neill comes across as a sort of gung ho moron (meant in the best possible sense of course), and refuses to take any of this foolishness seriously. He`s always ready with the sardonic quip, and his refusal to even pretend to understand any of the technobabble is endearing.

After watching these episodes though, I still can`t understand how Stargate SG1 got past the first season. The episodes are entertaining enough, but you`ll have seen this all before accomplished better in other TV or the movies. What`s worse is that the ongoing story is so complex that this volume is no place to start watching the series and is really for fans only. The sad thing is that Stargate SG1 is doing Star Trek better than anything Paramount can produce at the moment.