I loved the first three seasons of Stargate. It moved me and involved me in a way that no other television show ever has. I thought some incredible act of alchemy took place between those four characters in S1 that rendered even some of the worst episodes magical. There was always a nugget of gold in those episodes; always some character moment to be savoured and surprised by; a look or a touch or an unexpected contradiction that was the main thing that made this show become such a ‘must see’ for me.

Although I loved the concept, it was the characters that really grabbed me, and, unlike the movie where I was only really enthralled by Daniel Jackson, in the series I found all of the characters compulsive. Daniel is still the same mixture of brilliance and innocence, determination and sweetness, stubbornness and curiosity, which made him so endearing in the original movie, but in the series we get to see so much more of what makes him tick.

Series Jack I found a big improvement on movie Jack. He kept the likeable parts – the unexpected kindness towards those weaker than himself, the bonding with Daniel that took place almost without either of them noticing it had happened until they were speaking in unison, the vulnerability beneath the tough-guy exterior, his pain at anything bad happening to those he felt it was his duty to protect – but added to that we got humour, compassion, and his overwhelming sense of loyalty. A man prepared to take Daniel and Teal'c onto his team without a second thought because he owes his life to them, and their surface unsuitability for a military field unit something he is happy to work with and around in a surprisingly tactful way.

Teal'c grabbed me from the beginning in COTG; his compassion for others and dissatisfaction with his job working for Apophis shining through in every scene. Who doesn’t still get goosebumps in the ‘Help me’ scene between him and Jack? Not to mention the ‘I have nowhere to go’ moment?

Sam was done no favours at all by what must stand as one of the worst introduction to any character in a Sci-Fi series. (Jonas Quinn’s dire intro in Meridian has subsequently managed to push her into second place but there is still no excuse for the ‘Just because my reproductive organ...’ speech. Ugh.) But Sam overcame her intro and the icky attitude of the writers to her in this episode very quickly and the scene between her and Daniel in the cartouche room is a wonderful example of the ‘twins separated at birth’ sibling bonding that was such a large part of the relationship between these two characters in the first three seasons.

Added to these four core characters was a host of great supports. Apophis has never been surpassed as a villain. Hammond’s progress from snapping at Daniel in COTG to his compassion for him in Solitudes to that doting ‘How’s our boy doing?’ in Politics to the not-a-dry-eye-in-the-house moment in Crystal Skull when Daniel overhears him on the telephone to his granddaughter was a wonderful journey we got to watch as a logical progression every step of the way. (His bonding with Teal'c is equally wonderful to see, as is his tolerance for Problem Son Jack and Good Daughter Sam.) Janet went from her guest star feel in The Broca Divide to being such a vital part of the ‘family’ that one wondered how they had got through the first couple of episodes without her, or why they would even have wanted to when she was obviously always meant to be there.

And all of the relationships between the characters were fascinating. Not just the Jack and Daniel friendship, although that was certainly the one that brought me to the show and commanded most of my attention, but the other relationships outside of that core one as well. Sam and Daniel’s genius twins bonding; Daniel’s leaps into the unknown, Sam’s command of the complexities of hard science; whenever they were together one wished they had never been apart, wondering what kind of people they would both have been if Daniel had been adopted into the Carter family after his parents died. Daniel and Teal'c with all their history; Teal'c’s guilt leading him to be the great protector of Daniel; Daniel finding himself unable not to like and care about this man because of all his wonderful qualities despite the fact he was the one who chose his wife for implantation. (Happy days when this was addressed as in Thor’s Hammer and Cor-Ai.) Jack and Teal'c’s warriors from different cultures comparing notes and hiding their concern for one another behind a tough guy exterior which slipped as often as it stayed in place. Jack and Sam as the two Air Force Officers trying to keep their military heads when all about them are speaking Goa'uld or wandering off to look at ancient artefacts. And, of course, my second favourite relationship in the show, the always intriguing, never-quite-explored Sam and Teal'c dynamic; an untapped potential which tantalised us with the little moments we were occasionally thrown.

On top of these amazing characters and their incredible relationships was the terrific concept. As well as being about Daniel Jackson and Jack O’Neill, of course, the original movie is also about an ancient portal that a group of soldiers and a civilian archaeologist travel through to find out what’s on the other side. Who lives there? What threat do they represent? Are they human or alien? If human how did they get there? What is their culture like? What language do they speak? What myths do they have? How are they like and unlike ‘us’? Ditto, if they’re alien. How are they like us? How are they not like us? What different perspective can they bring to our world? What different perspective can we bring to theirs?

The movie caused Egyptian mythology to clash with modern Earth perspectives in a truly original premise that laid the groundwork for one of the best ideas in television: making available to the writers every god from every earth mythology as a potential bad guy and giving them alien technology which appeared to give them truly god-like powers.

But mostly it was about characters who start the movie as strangers and by the end have made sacrifices for one another, trust one another, care about one another. That was the basic premise that was originally carried through to the series with the additional hook of the fact that we were now invested in Daniel and Jack and wanted to know what happened next for them. How would their friendship develop? How would they work together when not in a crisis situation? How would their very different skills complement one another? What else about the universe were they going to learn? Where would they go next? Who would they meet next? What ramifications would these missions have for them, for earth, for the people that they met?

One of the most important things to me was how everyday our heroes were. From Teal’c we got a different and very valuable perspective on our planet, the SGC, and our other three heroes, but from them we got three of the most rooted in reality characters to ever grace a ‘sci-fi’ program. Three ordinary people just like us exploring the galaxy and encountering alien ‘gods’ and remnants of our lost civilizations.

Thanks to the brilliant idea of Wright and Glassner in the pilot to make the Stargate a portal that went not just between Earth and Abydos but was part of an entire network of Stargates going all over the galaxy, they opened the door to a series in which our heroes could literally go anywhere and meet anyone. (Thanks to the quantum mirror introduced in Grace of God, even themselves.) Where the people they encountered could be from any Earth civilization from any era and where the bad guys could be taking on the form of any god or demon from any Earth mythology. Who could not love a premise like that?

The first three seasons didn’t just live up to the sky high expectations these great character and this amazing concept raised, they surpassed it, again and again, constantly surprising me by plot twists, character quirks, and an ability to take risks that was really breath-taking. (Forever In A Day must be one of the most original explorations of point of view on television; with the kind of intelligence and subtlety one would usually expect to meet in an arthouse movie, not a mainstream sci-fi drama.)

My interest started to wane in S4 when the show seemed to lurch towards the usual clichés that had been so emphatically avoided in earlier seasons. I felt there was no real progression for either the characters or the story arcs, just regression to a parallel universe Stargate that some of those of us who’d watched it from the beginning thought that we’d been spared. In place of the wonderful show I’d used to love so much I found myself watching poor storylines, second-rate writing; second-rate characterisation; all the usual military-civilian contrived-conflict clichés avoided in the past turning up three years after they made any kind of sense; an illogical and inexplicable disintegration of previous relationships, a simplification of the characters to the lowest common denominator, and a sudden rash of conspiracy theory earthbound storylines that never felt as if they were going anywhere, and ultimately never were.

It felt like a new beginning to a new show but one in which the writers hadn’t actually been honest enough to change the title and admit that this was now a spin-off show, distorted to accommodate budgetary restrictions, new writers who seemed to have no interest in any episode made before their arrival or the characters at all (preferring to write about increasingly uninteresting guest characters), and to make way for MGM’s increasingly bad ideas.

I did, however, keep watching, because even if the show was not what it had been, it did still have Jack, Daniel, Sam and Teal'c travelling through the Stargate to visit new worlds, and I loved these characters and wanted to know what happened to them. Our team was still there albeit in a fractured and sometimes almost unrecognisable form. The SGC was still there. And out there somewhere just outside the budget restrictions presumably the universe was still out there also. S6 couldn’t even offer that much and S7 seems likely to be offering even less.

My interest in the show as something current and extant is pretty much non-existent. My interest in the show as it used to be in the first three seasons is as strong as ever. I’m thrilled S1 is now airing on the Sci-Fi channel and hope it brings lots of new viewers to the show who can appreciate its excellence. But unless Sci-Fi can find a way to turn S7 into a true inheritor of the mantle of seasons 1-3, I have no interest in it. If they did, I would love it as much as ever I did, providing it was about the original team with Daniel Jackson a descended human being on that team with no superhuman fluffy cloud abilities whatsoever and the primary focus of the episodes was Jack, Daniel, Sam and Teal'c exploring the galaxy through the Stargate, oh yes and treating each other decently as in days of old. (My idea of a good time is not watching The Fantastic Four Do X-Files.)

Jonas Quinn would have to be either a distant memory or a greasy stain on an alien world somewhere as that character just poisons every scene he’s in for me, and, of course, the writing would need to return to its former excellence. Without Daniel on the show and on the team, I really don’t mind what they do. If they want to turn into the Sam’n’Jonas show, good luck to them and may their ratings be buoyant and everyone’s mortgages be paid off before the season finale just as long as I don’t have to watch it.

I love all the characters but for me Daniel is the mortar that binds the show together. He is the heart. He is the hero of the story that began in the movie and that I want to follow through. The others without Daniel don’t hold my attention in the same way. I’m glad their lives continued and I hope the writers come up with a satisfactory ending for them rather than giving way to the easy option of just piling tragedies upon them all for the quick emotional reaction it elicits which too often gets mistaken for ‘depth’. But I came to the show from the movie. The movie is about Daniel Jackson and Jack O’Neill. Any episode of Stargate that doesn’t have Daniel Jackson and Jack O’Neill in it isn’t what I signed up for in the first place. There can be great episodes focused on a different character, certainly. Jolinar’s Memories, a Sam-focused episode, is one my favourites. Threshold is a standout episode in any season; like Jolinar’s Memories, it is an episode made by adults for adults with terrific writing and acting of the highest standard; but it takes place in a universe and a show in which Daniel and Jack are still the main two characters, both human, both friends, both equals, both on the same team.

When the show wandered away from that original premise it lost me, and as by the sound of things in S7 it will have wandered so far from the original premise as to be not Stargate SG-1 (half of the original SG-1 – which is the only SG-1 I have any interest in – not even making regular appearances) but the Sam, Teal’c, and Jonas Earthbound Conspiracy Theory show, it really makes no difference to me what takes place in it, I won’t be watching it.

Returning to the bliss that was Classic ‘Gate, the episode that completely enraptured me in S1 was “The Torment of Tantalus”. This episode had *everything*. The episodes I’ve always enjoyed the most are the ones that follow on and build from the original movie yet bring something entirely new and entirely original to the series which also tells us something new about the characters. That is exactly what ‘Tantalus’ does. (Along with the excellent pilot, the other two in S1 that also do this are ‘Solitudes’ and the story arc which begins with the brilliant ‘There But for the Grace of God’ and ends with the equally brilliant ‘Serpent’s Lair’.) We meet Katherine again in this episode, a wonderful original movie character who, like Kawalsky, Skaara, and Kasuf, I would have loved to see a lot more often than I did. We learn something entirely new about her, about her past, her relationship with the father we see at the beginning of the original movie, and about Ernest. We get a happy ending for Katherine, a really nice tying off of something that didn’t even seem to be a loose end until RCC unravelled it a bit for us.

We also get a story arc for Daniel that isn’t just to do about Sha’re, and moving although that Daniel-Sha’re story arc was, it was also, like the Jack’s Dead Son storyline, in serious danger of getting very old very fast when writers ignored who the person had been before this tragedy overtook them and decided to now make it their defining characteristic. It would have been so easy to just have Jack being a guy weighed down by the guilt because of his son’s death; and far too easy to have the Daniel who went through the Stargate the first time just to find out what was on the other side of it, suddenly now a guy whose only interest was his wife.

Anyone who has ever grieved for anyone knows that it just doesn’t work like that; the world doesn’t stop; the grieving person may be changed by their loss, but rarely out of all recognition; the human spirit is extraordinarily resilient and who the person was before will make its appearance once again before too long. ‘O’Neil’ gets his humanity back in the movie, thanks partly to Skaara and Daniel, but also because of the man he must have been before. He was clearly an ethical and compassionate man before his son died, and that gets a chance to re-emerge in the movie. In Tantalus we get the original movie Daniel back, a timely reminder that however much he might be grieving for Sha’re, he was a person before he knew her and that person is still who he is.

That Daniel has a stronger sense of curiosity than self-preservation; his fascination with the universal universe around him in this episode is more overpowering than his concerns for his own safety. (The Universal Language in the form of the chemical elements is a stroke of genius. And how fitting that something which came to its original creator in a dream (the periodic table) should be the metaphor for all that is just out of reach in this episode.) He is also so caught up in his fascination with the potential of this discovery that it is temporarily more important to him than his wife, his life on Earth, and the ability to explore new worlds and find out new things that he would be passing up by remaining on Ernest’s planet. Even the possibility of being stranded there forever is less important to him than his need to understand this repository of knowledge, to be able to unlock this language.

These were the days when Stargate was happy to deal with fairly abstract concepts and trust the audience to get it. We can feel the ache it causes Daniel to have to give this up, but tellingly, he does give it up when the reality of Jack being stranded there with him permeates even his excitement about this shiny new toy. He is flawed, maddening, compassionate, passionate, full of wonder, and ultimately more loyal to friendship even than to intellectual curiosity in this episode. He is also someone completely human; something else I never thought I would have to be grateful for, as the humanity and reality of Daniel and of Jack was something of such vital importance and value to this show it never occurred to me for a minute the writers would ever be so ill-advised as to squander those qualities.

Jack’s very human responses to Daniel, the wayward genius/innocent abroad/childlike enthusiast/incredibly stubborn adult male in this episode were another of those great little revelations we’d been getting since COTG about what a surprisingly complex man series Jack was. Series Jack was always a lot more than a leather jacket and a few snappy one-liners and throughout S1 we saw Jack struggling to find the right way to ‘manage’ Daniel; sometimes parental; sometimes fraternal; sometimes in awe of his knowledge; sometimes dumbfounded by his lack of commonsense; and never more so than in this one. As Daniel isn’t a soldier he can’t just be given orders without being offended by them, unlike Sam, the fellow Air Force officer. Teal’c has to be treated with a certain amount of careful respect because he is older than Jack and has been leading men into battle from before Jack was born, but he does at least understand the military mindset and the importance of chain of command. Daniel’s essentially questioning nature is at odds with blind obedience; that is why they need him as the communicator and the conscience of the team; a counterpoint to orders that sometimes should never be followed.

Jack manages a difficult juggling act in S1 of trying not to hurt anyone’s feelings while still having his team do more or less what he says, while at the same being a very flawed human being without limitless amounts of patience. We really see what a great leader he is in the early seasons as he tries not to boss Daniel or Teal’c about while also keeping control.

Here he is very visibly torn between being a ‘parent’ to Daniel and physically dragging him out of a place where he is putting himself in danger, and allowing Daniel to make his own decision, as one should with an adult civilian. After an initial struggle and a plea from Daniel, he chooses the latter option, and instead lets Daniel make his own decision but also makes it clear that he isn’t going anywhere so if Daniel gets stranded/killed he will be stranding/killing Jack also. Coming on top of Ernest’s lecture of earlier, that finally does get through to Daniel, and he elects to choose friendship over knowledge, albeit not with some regrets. How much more tense and imaginative than just having someone trot out a platitude about Daniel’s wife needing him; and how much more significant too in a show that in the early days was about the bonding between these four people and the way they changed from strangers into friends, becoming in the process the family that each of them has lost.

Other great things about Tantalus and that this is a story that could only have taken place in the Stargate universe. To work things that are uniquely Stargate have to be in place; it works only for this show and these characters and is all the better for it. The broken DHD is still one of the most chilling images we’ve ever seen on the show, and it was very fitting that just as they were in the first enthusiasm of exploring the galaxy they should have to deal with what happens if you can’t get home. (This is touched on again with Tin Man in a very different but also very effective way, and in Grace of God in an entirely different way.) The supporting characters are vital to the story and fascinating in their own right. The team is off-world and all together (not that one thought anything of that back in the days of S1 as where else would the team be? But in later seasons that became such a rarity that one cherishes it about this episode even more now), and they work together to get out even while Daniel is busy following in Ernest’s footsteps and, at least until the end, failing to learn from Ernest’s mistakes.

It has small wonders: the stunt when Jack pulls Sam out of the way of the falling pillar is still one of the best ever seen in the show; and then Jack and Daniel’s last second dash for the Stargate with the ceiling raining down upon them. Jack comes up with a solution that works. (Those were the days when Dumb Jack wasn’t even thought of.) Teal'c manually dials up the ‘gate for the first time. And it has large wonders too, as, of course, this is the beginning of *the* great Stargate story arc: the alliance of four alien races: The Ancients. The Asgard. The Nox. The Furlings. At that time we had met the Nox but not seen their written language and didn’t fully understand their significance; had never met the Asgard, the Ancients, or the Furlings. (It’s a little tragic that five years later we still haven’t met the Ancients or the Furlings when so many episodes have been frittered away on B movie remakes or uninteresting guest stars.)

But even now it’s impossible not to get a thrill of excitement when SG-1 see that alien script on the walls of that chamber; not to feel some of the same wonder that Daniel does when those glowing chemical elements circle over their heads. (Still a beautiful special effect worth every penny it must have cost.)

S1 set up almost every storyline of any significance in the show, including the foundations for the all-important meeting with the Asgard that comes in S2. (I can only think of two that came later that matched them for importance: the Tok’ra storyline that begins in In the Line of Duty which gave us the Jolinar memories left in Sam, her ability to use Goa'uld technology, Jacob Carter, and Sam’s relationship with Martouf, all of which reached their peak of excellence in Jolinar’s Memories/Devil You Know in S3, and the Harsesis storyline which begins in Secrets with Sha’re’s pregnancy.)

Bloodlines introduced Teal'c’s family. Cor-Ai told us about Teal'c’s guilt about Sha’re and all the others, and dealt intelligently and in an adult way with how a good man who has done bad things then lives with himself afterwards. (Teal'c while as first prime of Apophis; Jack while working for Special Ops). Grace of God gave us the quantum mirror. Solitudes gave us the second gate. Singularity introduced Cassandra. The Nox introduced the Nox. Enigma introduced the Tollan. Thor’s Hammer introduced the Asgard. Fire and Water showed how inter-dependent and attached SG-1 had become. And, of course, Hathor introduced Hathor, but as all that ever led to was Out of Mind and Into the Fire they could have saved themselves the bother of that one for me, although one can still admire the terrific dignity Suanne Braun brought to a fairly thankless role.

Sara, a very sympathetic character in both the movie and Cold Lazarus, deserved much better closure than she got in that episode, for all its undoubted emotional punch and terrific acting from RDA, and if Emancipation was wiped from the archives tomorrow there would probably not be too many tears shed. But I would still take even the weakest S1 episode, which always carried a core of compassion within itself, and always gave us a sense of four people who cared for one another, over the empty-headed and empty-hearted episodes that came later.

Although I loved all of the first three seasons my favourite has to be season three and I will admit the reasons are slightly shallow. That’s the only full season where Jack has grey hair and Daniel has short hair, and IMO they both look their best like that. (Told you it was shallow.) Of course there is also the little matter of Season Three containing: Legacy, Maternal Instinct, Forever In A Day, Deadman Switch, Jolinar’s Memories-The Devil You Know, Pretense, Shades of Grey, Fair Game, Crystal Skull, and Demons. All episodes I found excellent imaginative, intelligent, and original, made with sky-high production values and an assumption that their audience had an IQ larger than their shoe size.

It has a few clunkers, of course: Foothold. (Big bugs?? Why? Why would you do that?? It’s scientifically nonsensical but has a nice Sam and Teal’c scene and Sam calling Maybourne an idiot, which was nice). A Hundred Days. (Stargate does ‘Witness’ only unfortunately very slowly and badly, with the now standard off-the-peg unsympathetic drippy female guest star, and with some totally unnecessary Sam-character ruination; Jack looks darned hot though so certainly not a total loss). New Ground (static and underwritten but does have some excellent Danny whumping, although Jack’s non-reaction was already becoming a problem as was the urge to poke him with a sharp stick when any of his teammate’s were in peril). Learning Curve. (Lost me as soon as we got into Starsky & Hutch territory with yet more Jack-and-a-kid toe-curlingly sentimental twaddle, but the early scenes on the planet are good, as is Sam’s interaction with the child, and it is at least a really original story and unafraid to ask difficult questions).

And I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit to having a huge problem with the characterization of the Point of View Any-Jack-O'Neill-in-a-storm-who-cares-if-the-guy-I-was-married-to-for-the-past-year-is-barely-cold-in-the-ground Doctor ‘Shallow Sam’ Carter – who does at least perform the function of making me so grateful for the matter-of-fact professionalism of ‘our’ Sam in this episode. But apart from that I really like POV. With the exception of the irritating drippy Carter subplot, which, rather like A Hundred Days, I found an insult to every woman who has ever actually lost a partner, it has a great storyline. It packs an awful lot into 45 minutes. It uses the quantum mirror (ten zillion bonus points just for that). Kawalsky is in it. (Yeah!) Jack isn’t a total git to Daniel and actually seems quite concerned about him on a couple of occasions. (Double yeah!) Two Teal’c’s are in it, which is even better than one, and we get a reminder of his self-hatred about who he used to be when he bumps himself off to the visible shock of Jack and Daniel. AU Sam kisses Our Teal’c. (Our Sam kissing Our Teal’c would be better but I’ll settle for AU Sam doing it.) And Daniel looks breathtakingly beautiful in it. (Always a bonus and thank you Peter DeLuise.)

Okay, after the several thousand years the guy was hiding out on earth, Seth could have stretched to something a bit more impressive than a tatty farmhouse and a few acolytes. (Wouldn’t something more Devil Rides Out have been more appropriate?) And, yes, apart from Teal’c’s speech to the Jaffa of Chulak Into the Fire is pretty much a waste of time. Both still have their moments though (like Teal'c and Hammond riding to the rescue), and more importantly, they do also have the original team together and showing concern for one another.

However, annoying or flawed I may have found these episodes I would still take them over any season six Daniel-free episode or some of the clunkier S4 or S5 episodes. I have watched them all more than once; some of them, like POV, several times. (No one could pay me enough to watch Fail Safe or Wormhole X-Treme twice and I still haven’t been able to bring myself to buy the DVDs they are on whereas I have both the Region 1 and Region 2 boxsets of S1.) The whole season has the same magic to it that is there in S1 and S2. (And if Daniel had short hair in S2 I would probably love that one best given that it contains: The Serpent’s Lair; The Fifth Race; Secrets; Serpent’s Song: One False Step; Prisoners; Thor’s Chariot; Gamekeeper; Holiday; Need; In the Line of Duty and the Sam’n’Teal'c scene in Matter of Time...but he doesn’t, and short-haired Daniel is just so darned beautiful I can’t help loving that version of him best.)

Trying to pick *a* favourite episode is really tough. (I am someone who when asked to pick a top ten could barely narrow it down to 21 after all.) But I’ll give it a go:

Favourite Stargate episodes:

1: The Fifth Race
2: The Torment of Tantalus
3: Maternal Instinct

Favourite Team Episode: The Torment of Tantalus. (Closely followed by Devil You Know but Teal'c isn’t with the others in that one.)

Favourite Jack episode: The Fifth Race. (Shades of Grey being one of the few other Jack episodes I thought worthy of the potential of that character and which didn’t involve him sleeping with bimbos or interacting with kids in a glutinous fashion.)

Favourite Daniel episode: One? I have to pick *one* Daniel episode? Okay, Maternal Instinct. (Closely followed by Legacy and FIAD and Secret and Serpent’s Song and Fire and Water and There But For The Grace of God etc etc ).

Favourite Sam episode: Jolinar’s Memories. (Although I think ITLoD would merit a mention for imagination and originality even if it didn’t involve the sheer bliss of Sam elbowing Jack in the head.)

Favourite Teal’c episode: Threshold. (Despite having good episodes in S1, Teal'c got short-changed far too often after that, but Threshold really was an incredible piece of work. It was just a shame we had to wait so long for it.)

Desert Island Stargate: The Fifth Race; Torment of Tantalus; Maternal Instinct; Jolinar’s Memories-The Devil You Know; Within the Serpents Grasp-Serpent’s Lair; Legacy; Forever In A Day; Deadman Switch; Pretense...er...how many episodes were we allowed to take again?

By Lori
11th Oct 2002

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