Warning! Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!
I decided to just review the first two seasons of Stargate SG-1 together as they really feel like one big season, and that’s a good thing. The producers didn’t do anything to screw up a good formula in season two.
SG-1 picks up where the Stargate movie left off, but there’s just enough different that it feels like a parallel universe to that of the movie, though that’s never suggested. The cast is great and works well together. Richard Dean Anderson in particular is fantastic as Colonel Jack O’Neill. He plays the “lovable jerk” role well. He’s also part of what makes the show feel like an alternate reality to the movie though as his O’Neill is nothing like Kurt Russell’s O’Neil (notice the slight spelling difference). In one episode he even tells a reporter to make sure to spell his name with two “L’s,” as there’s another O’Neil in the Air Force with one “L” an no sense of humor. The show has lots of little meta references like that. In the first episode Carter even uses the word MacGyver as a verb.
The main bad guys are a race of parasitic beings known as the Goa’uld, who forcibly use human beings as hosts. They kind of serve the same purpose in SG-1 that the Borg did in the 80’s and 90’s Star Trek series’: They’re more powerful than the humans, and they steal the individualism of their prey. The neat twist on the Goa’uld is that they masquerade as gods and goddesses from ancient Earth cultures, particularly ancient Egyptian cultures.
The 2000’s have been full of sci-fi shows that take themselves too seriously, are super dark, and are filled with protagonists who are morally suspect. These same shows also tend to be super-serialized to the point that if you miss an episode or two you’re out of the loop. Examples include Battlestar Galactica, Flash Forward, and The Event. It’s been really refreshing to find in SG-1 a series that is episodic rather than serialized (albeit with story lines that weave in and out throughout the seasons), doesn’t take itself seriously at all (though without being completely silly), and has protagonists that are actually good guys.
I’m really liking what I’m seeing so far. If you haven’t looked into this series, I really recommend checking it out!
Update: One thing I wanted to mention as a warning about season one of SG-1 is that the first episode features a scene of full-frontal female nudity. I was absolutely shocked when we watched that episode, because it’s so out of place in a show that I would otherwise have no problem showing a child. If Wikipedia is to be believed, this was done at the insistence of Showtime, the network on which SG-1 first aired. It’s completely gratuitous. Wikipedia says that the scene is not in the direct-to-DVD version of the episode, but I can’t confirm that. Netflix definitely has the naughty version, at least when you watch it as part of season one. All I can say is, be ye warned!
