stargate rewatch: S1 takeaways
Jul. 15th, 2026 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kanadkaOkay, so. :'D This season isn't great - you know it, I know it, we all know it. There are some usual Stargatey reasons why it's not great. There's also some generic 'early seasons tv show' reasons why it's not great. Anything that would improve either of these two factors would be most welcome but also would invite the question that like, if you have serious misgivings with these, many of these problems will persist and also some will get worse, so... grain of salt.
But, idk, there's also a lot of potential in S1 that went underused, and to me there's tons of fruitful potential, for fic, or discussion, or what-not. We have yet to meet the tok'ra, the Tollan and Nox aren't likely to return our calls, and the Free Jaffa Nation is but a hope in Teal'c's heretical heart. They have very few allies they can count on and not a lot of technology and while they've learned quite a lot, they have so much more to learn. The universe feels giant, insurmountable, full of mysteries and the more than occasional pitfall, but ultimately exciting.
I wrote these takeaways mostly for me for the future, not that I have huge ambitions of SG-1 fic, but I dabble here and there, and you never know! I hope it's useful for someone else too, or maybe it's a good jumping off point for conversation. Anyway!
1. What's necessary to take from this season:
Basically, if I had to summarise key points of S1 SG-1 for fic setting purpose, how would I do that.
- The Nox and the Tollan are two of the more important races out there and they're more technologically advanced than we are, but they're also not willing to share because they think we're too young. Tbh, our actions in S1 show they're probably right about that.
- An element called naquadah powers the Stargates; it's highly volatile and you can turn it into a bomb. To get it, you need to mine it.
- There are alternate realities and you can access them using a fancy mirror.
- It's technically possible to separate a goa'uld from its host once bonded, but it's not easy. Goa'ulds reproduce using queens and their infant larva must remain in some sort of amniotic like fluid for a time before they can be implanted in a Jaffa. This highly ceremonial ritual results in the Jaffa's immune system being life-long dependent on the goa'uld symbiote they carry; they thereafter cannot be without it for significant periods of time without suffering ill effects (few hours).
- Earth has a second gate we found in Antarctica; the one we found in Egypt seems to have been transported there by Ra. The Egypt gate didn't have a DHD; the Antarctica gate does.
- We use an adjustable titanium aperture called an iris to cover the Stargate which prevents matter from reintegrating when it exits the wormhole.
- Wormholes destabilise after approximately 38 minutes, and you can spam a gate repeatedly by redialing after the destabilisation period to prevent people from dialing out.
- Nobody knows about the Stargate program, except for some people in the Pentagon, the NID ("National Intelligence Department"), and certain echelons of civilian government. Of these, the NID particularly is set up to be the antagonist to the protagonist SGC run under the USAF, with civilian government mostly being concerned with budgetary constraints and security risks.
- We don't know about the tok'ra yet, or the Reetou, or the Ancients (we don't even know them by name), and we've never seen an Asgard IRL yet (or even holographically). We know what naquadah is but we've barely scratched the surface in working with it (to say nothing of naquadria, its highly unstable isotope, or trinium, or tretonin). We can maybe, maybe, shoot things from the ground. We don't really have a space program beyond basic shuttle service and realistically that's also a stretch. We also don't know that an 8-character Stargate address can be used to dial a location in another galaxy. We've met a handful of goa'uld, but we don't even know who are the System Lords, much less who rebels against them and isn't covered under their governance.
2. What episodes would you need to rewatch to get enough context to be able to write this era? What episodes are good to watch because they give valuable information and/or are particular entertaining?
I would say at least 8 episodes (NB I'm counting Children of the Gods here as 1 episode), perhaps only 6 if you omit 'Cor-ai' and 'Politics' (hence labelled below with *).
- Children of the Gods & The Enemy Within - these two are basically a 3-parter together and set up the conflict with Apophis as well as show you what the motivations apparently are for Jack and Daniel (Skaara and Sha're respectively). Quite a lot of goa'uld tech is introduced like the staff weapon, the death gliders, and the kara kesh handheld device (the one with the finger claws that hypnotises or tortures people).
- Bloodlines: Introduces you more to Teal'c's motivation as well as Jaffa worldbuilding and society and three people who will return: his son Rya'c, his wife Drey'auc, and his former master (also a former First Prime of Apophis) Bra'tac.
- The Nox: Introduces an advanced race called, appropriately, the Nox and their technology of invisibility as well as bioelectric manipulation. We also see goa'uld personal forcefield device use.
- * Cor-ai: While heavy handed, this one shows you more of Teal'c's motivation and elements of his past. However, it is also primarily for Teal'c/Jaffa fans and serves as a nice bookend as Shac'l returns (from "The Nox") so it is ultimately skippable.
- Enigma: Introduces an advanced race called the Tollan and their technology of dephasing. We also see that our methods to preserve the base (iris, lack of DHD) do not stop the Nox.
- * Politics: Including this episode lets us skip a bunch of other episodes but fills you in on the missing context, and also introduces Kinsey. Ultimately, though, it too is skippable and you can just read the missing context below.
- Within the Serpent's Grasp: the continuation of Politics. It also features many scenes aboard a ha'tak vessel and some layout, as well as adding the goa'uld long range communication device and the zat'ni'ktel gun to our understanding of goa'uld tech, as well as setting up Season 2 with an attack on Earth from space (as opposed to through the Stargate).
3. What episodes can you skip or should you skip because they're either a waste of time or legitimately bad? What context would be missing from them if you didn't watch them?
You can skip 13 episodes (if skipping Cor-ai and Politics as above, you can skip as much as 15). It's true that a lot happens in S1 that sets up storylines in future seasons, so if we do skip those episodes, but want to retain context for future seasons, what specifically would we be missing?
Emancipation
- Nothing is needed here.
The Broca Divide
- Nothing is needed here.
The First Commandment
- Goa'uld tech includes a shield device that ejects an arial forcefield. You need two of them to be able to create a hemispherical forcefield dome with the two devices placed as endpoints of the diameter that defines the dome. Presumably, the closer together the devices are placed, the stronger the field strength is, and the farther apart, the weaker the field strength. (But that's speculation on my part.)
Cold Lazarus
- Nothing is needed here. It's a great episode, dramatically-speaking, especially if you like Jack backstory, but nothing ultimately is needed here.
Brief Candle
- Nanocytes or nanites are a technology that some goa'uld are investigating. Goa'uld technology can only exert control on those nanites provided there's a power source nearby.
Thor's Hammer
- There's a race of aliens called the Asgard, and they're powerful enough to present a force that can withstand the System Lords, with whom they appear to be galacto-politically in some sort of detente. On at least one Asgard-protected world, there is a forcefield that upon walking through it kills the goa'uld parasite within a host and leaves the host free. Goa'uld tech includes a handheld healing device. Having once been a goa'uld host enables you to use goa'uld technology even after the goa'uld parasite is destroyed.
The Torment of Tantalus
- There is a location where 4 great races used to meet up. They appear to have left quite a lot of information but much of it is incomprehensible; after this episode, the location is no longer accessible (stargate fell into the ocean).
Fire and Water
- Nothing is needed here.
Hathor
- We meet a goa'uld queen - these are relatively rare. Goa'uld reproduction isn't entirely clear but we learn queens can make new infant larva with contribution of external DNA (of at least one intended host species). We also learn goa'uld can create Jaffa by use of a device worn as a torso harness. The sarcophagus appears to heal all wounds but energy overload (e.g. from a staff weapon) will cause it to explode. Hathor, a goa'uld queen who was once the wife of Ra, has escaped containment at the SGC and left through the Stargate, so we have no idea where she is and how much intelligence she took with her.
Singularity
- Naquadah is the element that powers the Stargate. An alien girl named Cassandra lives with Dr Janet Fraiser because she cannot leave through the Stargate or the naquadah bomb in her chest will explode with the equivalent force of multiple nuclear bombs. The goa'uld responsible for that plot is named Nirrti, purportedly an enemy of Apophis.
Solitudes
- There's a second gate in Antarctica, buried in ice. It appears to be the original gate as it has a DHD; the one found in Egypt did not have one, and appears to have been brought there by Ra for his use after it appeared to him the original Stargate was lost. We also thus learn Stargates can be moved.
Tin Man
- We learn that there are 4 robotic clones of SG-1 that live on Altair and cannot really leave. They have all of SG-1's human memories up to about mid-S1.
There but for the Grace of God
- There exists a piece of technology shaped like a mirror through which you can access alternate realities.
4. Overall takeaways
You can skip at most 15 out of 22 episodes (22 as I'm now counting Children of the Gods as 2 episodes this time, so the numbers match with what you google...) which is just absurd to me. Man!! That's such a foolish amount of episodes to skip. It really goes to show how different 90s TV was: whole seasons were just straight up filler or poorly written, or both. You could get away with that shit and people would tolerate it - viewership would be maintained. Now even with high viewership we're never guaranteed to keep certain shows (e.g. Wheel of Time). On one hand I miss having filler episodes for giving characters room to breathe, especially if the show was willing to take that room for those characters to show impacts of the plot upon them - but Stargate S1 was not. On the other hand, I kind of think tightening up the writing has sometimes helped the characters be more consistent in the first place. But it's hard to say that that was a causal factor here - I think we lost a lot of this scheme after the writer's strike in 2007 which had a lot of long term effects for network TV, where this kind of structure (23-season episode) had been endemic. But it's similarly hard to say as streaming also picked up roughly about the same time (and was one of the indirect causes of the 2007 strikes), so we could also blame streaming for shorter season, longer episodes, and more longer plot-arc based seasons (what some producers may have felt necessitated a move away from Episode Of The Week). Somewhere out there in media & communication studies someone has probably done a better essay tracking what went where and when.
So far the writing for Stargate has been not great. There's sort of a slow ramp-up learning curve as they settle in to the characters and start connecting dots a bit better between episodes despite this being an episodic kind of show - the characters should still remain consistent, and by the end of the season, they do have somewhat firmer personalities. This gets even better in Season 2, so it's a reason to keep watching: Sam Carter especially gets much better. Unfortunately, most of the plots of these episodes feel really retreaded - these are sci-fi plots we've definitely seen before. So S1: the plots don't feel fresh, and the characters aren't really worth watching for yet.
We already see a trend of Sam being used when there's a need for someone to fix advanced technology or explain advanced technology, while Daniel is used for basically every other reveal including scientific ones even though he shouldn't know some of this stuff because he's not a STEM person. While Teal'c has had a lot of cool moments this season, there hasn't been a ton of extensive Jaffa cultural or political worldbuilding, nor has there been a lot of System Lords cultural or political worldbuilding. He's basically just used as occasional exposition dump specifically when the plot requires it, even though realistically (even in-universe since the NID wants him so bad) you'd think that more intelligence would have been gotten out of him way long ago instead of at the 11th hour. This is what I usually mean by "not great pacing" when I'm being critical of Stargate, it's that I feel like someone's writing in a rugpull when it didn't have to be. If it's done well, I don't see the seams so obviously.
There's also a trend of potentially interesting but dark scenarios taken with absurd levity. It doesn't feel like it's intentionally trying to make light of dark scenarios, either to mock them or because it's what fans expect, it feels at this stage more like they want to discuss these creepy dark things and interact with them, but it's primetime TV, so we can't. It's kind of similar to the Star Wars movies to me, where you could tell interesting stories if you considered The Implications but most people don't and it's kind of this very tropey campy thing. Villains are bad, heroes are good, 1D kind of spectrum. I actually wonder sometimes if the audience was intended to be adult or young adult.
Neither Sam nor Daniel get a satisfying backstory but Sam is definitely the one who suffers the most from this as we know nothing about her (we at least know Daniel has emotional investment in the SGC because of his wife Sha're whom he occasionally references). The same can be said of Janet Fraiser who is a recurring character but is basically just a lady in a lab coat for all we know, even though she volunteered to take Cassandra in (c.f. Singularity). Teal'c has some backstory information given because of System Lord relation, and we also get a glimpse into Jaffa society and his personal family situation. Jack's backstory is explored somewhat, mostly by spelling out the story that was implied in the movie. In general there's not a lot of explorations of the characters beyond having it tie into the plot of the day, so there's quite a lot fic could do here to flesh that out. We don't have Teal'c's first take on the Tau'ri surface (let's not count Cold Lazarus, as he didn't get to see a whole lot). We don't have Sam and Daniel getting to know each other and bonding. Jack and Teal'c develop a fairly strong loyal bond between them (c.f. Bloodlines) but we don't see know how this was formed. Someone must surely have had a birthday; how was it celebrated if at all? What does Teal'c do when he's restless at night and cannot leave the SGC, is there a gym or pool or something he gets access to? Have any of the team done sleepovers for whatever reason (e.g. staying late one night for research or report filing)? Are there extended families involved at all?
SGC is in general full of military guy jarhead types. It's like no women work here except for 2-3. We see some elements of pushback against the military but they are really few and feel more tokenesque or placed for our heroes to be relatable, while the whole thing is ultimately dominated by the Honourable Servicemen kind of vibe. It's propagandistic and jingoistic in a similar way that copaganda is, repeating plotpoints that either suggest realism in or straight up teach military life, either directly (we don't leave our people behind, if we're both serving active duty officers we can't date because of chain of command, etc) or indirectly (DADT). There are believable scenarios of military honour and camaraderie and they come at the expense of any civilian attributes of life. The most annoying part that it continually rehashes is the depiction and justification of American military intervention, and the fact that it's all kept covered up as secret - a decision which also is justified by the cover-up being necessary to stop mass panic from impending alien invasion. In Season 1, it's not so bad, it's pretty easy to ignore. However - and it's wild to think it - but while we are already very cozy already with the super secret heroic USAF in S1, that will grow moreso and from what I remember this problem actually gets worse (as the scale of the cover-ups gets increasingly hard to believe, to the point that I don't think anybody born with smartphones could take the latter seasons at all seriously). It's kind of a bitter pill to be saying "actually, Season 1 is some of Stargate at its best". : /
Lastly, I appreciate the Humans Are Underdogs vibes here, and I'm sad to see we'll be losing that as the series goes on and it doubles down harder on the Team America World Police vibes. I like sci-fi a lot when the universe is reminding us how very young we are and how much we really don't know - early seasons Stargate has a lot of that.
5. Some Fic Recs Maybe?
Here I tried to target works of various kinds that only require S1 knowledge. Having allusions to later seasons is mostly OK but I'm looking for stuff that is spoiler-free, that only requires S1, or which primarily engages with topics or characters we saw in S1 (e.g. Hathor's attempted takeover of the SGC is fair game, Hathor's various misadventures behind the scenes as a System Lord in S2-S3 would proobably not be).
Not the first time I've recced it, but I've reread after my rewatch and damn it's even better than I remembered!! Jack/Teal'c, longfic canon divergence - my bookmarks say simply "I've wanted this fic forever." and it is SO TRUE. Every time I rewatch SG-1 I am awestruck by how shippy the Jack/Teal'c is (and Cam/Teal'c later in S9-10). I love this enemies to lovers take on them which is canon divergent from the start of the show where Teal'c doesn't take Jack up on his offer to save the captives and doesn't immediately switch sides, but Teal'c is still every bit the revolutionary atheist he is in canon. The Jaffa worldbuilding is pretty good and the Teal'c characterisation is phenomenal 🤩️
Canon knowledge required: S1E1 (Children of the Gods) is required, and the original movie would be helpful but in lieu of that, enough episodes of early SG-1 to know who the players are would help.
Nice Jack/Teal'c H/C set somewhere in S1. Teal'c's voice is nice in here, as is his loyalty to Jack <3
Canon knowledge required: S1E1&2 ("Children of the Gods") in order to know who the players are, that SG-1 is a team that does fieldwork on behalf of SGC through the Stargate, and S1E3 ("The Enemy Within") to know that there is an iris, and that Teal'c is more firmly on their side now. There's an allusion to Jack taking Teal'c home, which is purportedly the first time Teal'c ventures to the surface, so this must be set before S1E7 ("Cold Lazarus").
I like this one, it has a bit more explanation as to why Daniel forgives Teal'c so readily and some added context that Teal'c does not forgive himself.
Canon knowledge required: S1E1&2 ("Children of the Gods") only.
I'll probably take about a week off and be back with Season 2.
But, idk, there's also a lot of potential in S1 that went underused, and to me there's tons of fruitful potential, for fic, or discussion, or what-not. We have yet to meet the tok'ra, the Tollan and Nox aren't likely to return our calls, and the Free Jaffa Nation is but a hope in Teal'c's heretical heart. They have very few allies they can count on and not a lot of technology and while they've learned quite a lot, they have so much more to learn. The universe feels giant, insurmountable, full of mysteries and the more than occasional pitfall, but ultimately exciting.
I wrote these takeaways mostly for me for the future, not that I have huge ambitions of SG-1 fic, but I dabble here and there, and you never know! I hope it's useful for someone else too, or maybe it's a good jumping off point for conversation. Anyway!
1. What's necessary to take from this season:
Basically, if I had to summarise key points of S1 SG-1 for fic setting purpose, how would I do that.
- The Nox and the Tollan are two of the more important races out there and they're more technologically advanced than we are, but they're also not willing to share because they think we're too young. Tbh, our actions in S1 show they're probably right about that.
- An element called naquadah powers the Stargates; it's highly volatile and you can turn it into a bomb. To get it, you need to mine it.
- There are alternate realities and you can access them using a fancy mirror.
- It's technically possible to separate a goa'uld from its host once bonded, but it's not easy. Goa'ulds reproduce using queens and their infant larva must remain in some sort of amniotic like fluid for a time before they can be implanted in a Jaffa. This highly ceremonial ritual results in the Jaffa's immune system being life-long dependent on the goa'uld symbiote they carry; they thereafter cannot be without it for significant periods of time without suffering ill effects (few hours).
- Earth has a second gate we found in Antarctica; the one we found in Egypt seems to have been transported there by Ra. The Egypt gate didn't have a DHD; the Antarctica gate does.
- We use an adjustable titanium aperture called an iris to cover the Stargate which prevents matter from reintegrating when it exits the wormhole.
- Wormholes destabilise after approximately 38 minutes, and you can spam a gate repeatedly by redialing after the destabilisation period to prevent people from dialing out.
- Nobody knows about the Stargate program, except for some people in the Pentagon, the NID ("National Intelligence Department"), and certain echelons of civilian government. Of these, the NID particularly is set up to be the antagonist to the protagonist SGC run under the USAF, with civilian government mostly being concerned with budgetary constraints and security risks.
- We don't know about the tok'ra yet, or the Reetou, or the Ancients (we don't even know them by name), and we've never seen an Asgard IRL yet (or even holographically). We know what naquadah is but we've barely scratched the surface in working with it (to say nothing of naquadria, its highly unstable isotope, or trinium, or tretonin). We can maybe, maybe, shoot things from the ground. We don't really have a space program beyond basic shuttle service and realistically that's also a stretch. We also don't know that an 8-character Stargate address can be used to dial a location in another galaxy. We've met a handful of goa'uld, but we don't even know who are the System Lords, much less who rebels against them and isn't covered under their governance.
2. What episodes would you need to rewatch to get enough context to be able to write this era? What episodes are good to watch because they give valuable information and/or are particular entertaining?
I would say at least 8 episodes (NB I'm counting Children of the Gods here as 1 episode), perhaps only 6 if you omit 'Cor-ai' and 'Politics' (hence labelled below with *).
- Children of the Gods & The Enemy Within - these two are basically a 3-parter together and set up the conflict with Apophis as well as show you what the motivations apparently are for Jack and Daniel (Skaara and Sha're respectively). Quite a lot of goa'uld tech is introduced like the staff weapon, the death gliders, and the kara kesh handheld device (the one with the finger claws that hypnotises or tortures people).
- Bloodlines: Introduces you more to Teal'c's motivation as well as Jaffa worldbuilding and society and three people who will return: his son Rya'c, his wife Drey'auc, and his former master (also a former First Prime of Apophis) Bra'tac.
- The Nox: Introduces an advanced race called, appropriately, the Nox and their technology of invisibility as well as bioelectric manipulation. We also see goa'uld personal forcefield device use.
- * Cor-ai: While heavy handed, this one shows you more of Teal'c's motivation and elements of his past. However, it is also primarily for Teal'c/Jaffa fans and serves as a nice bookend as Shac'l returns (from "The Nox") so it is ultimately skippable.
- Enigma: Introduces an advanced race called the Tollan and their technology of dephasing. We also see that our methods to preserve the base (iris, lack of DHD) do not stop the Nox.
- * Politics: Including this episode lets us skip a bunch of other episodes but fills you in on the missing context, and also introduces Kinsey. Ultimately, though, it too is skippable and you can just read the missing context below.
- Within the Serpent's Grasp: the continuation of Politics. It also features many scenes aboard a ha'tak vessel and some layout, as well as adding the goa'uld long range communication device and the zat'ni'ktel gun to our understanding of goa'uld tech, as well as setting up Season 2 with an attack on Earth from space (as opposed to through the Stargate).
3. What episodes can you skip or should you skip because they're either a waste of time or legitimately bad? What context would be missing from them if you didn't watch them?
You can skip 13 episodes (if skipping Cor-ai and Politics as above, you can skip as much as 15). It's true that a lot happens in S1 that sets up storylines in future seasons, so if we do skip those episodes, but want to retain context for future seasons, what specifically would we be missing?
Emancipation
- Nothing is needed here.
The Broca Divide
- Nothing is needed here.
The First Commandment
- Goa'uld tech includes a shield device that ejects an arial forcefield. You need two of them to be able to create a hemispherical forcefield dome with the two devices placed as endpoints of the diameter that defines the dome. Presumably, the closer together the devices are placed, the stronger the field strength is, and the farther apart, the weaker the field strength. (But that's speculation on my part.)
Cold Lazarus
- Nothing is needed here. It's a great episode, dramatically-speaking, especially if you like Jack backstory, but nothing ultimately is needed here.
Brief Candle
- Nanocytes or nanites are a technology that some goa'uld are investigating. Goa'uld technology can only exert control on those nanites provided there's a power source nearby.
Thor's Hammer
- There's a race of aliens called the Asgard, and they're powerful enough to present a force that can withstand the System Lords, with whom they appear to be galacto-politically in some sort of detente. On at least one Asgard-protected world, there is a forcefield that upon walking through it kills the goa'uld parasite within a host and leaves the host free. Goa'uld tech includes a handheld healing device. Having once been a goa'uld host enables you to use goa'uld technology even after the goa'uld parasite is destroyed.
The Torment of Tantalus
- There is a location where 4 great races used to meet up. They appear to have left quite a lot of information but much of it is incomprehensible; after this episode, the location is no longer accessible (stargate fell into the ocean).
Fire and Water
- Nothing is needed here.
Hathor
- We meet a goa'uld queen - these are relatively rare. Goa'uld reproduction isn't entirely clear but we learn queens can make new infant larva with contribution of external DNA (of at least one intended host species). We also learn goa'uld can create Jaffa by use of a device worn as a torso harness. The sarcophagus appears to heal all wounds but energy overload (e.g. from a staff weapon) will cause it to explode. Hathor, a goa'uld queen who was once the wife of Ra, has escaped containment at the SGC and left through the Stargate, so we have no idea where she is and how much intelligence she took with her.
Singularity
- Naquadah is the element that powers the Stargate. An alien girl named Cassandra lives with Dr Janet Fraiser because she cannot leave through the Stargate or the naquadah bomb in her chest will explode with the equivalent force of multiple nuclear bombs. The goa'uld responsible for that plot is named Nirrti, purportedly an enemy of Apophis.
Solitudes
- There's a second gate in Antarctica, buried in ice. It appears to be the original gate as it has a DHD; the one found in Egypt did not have one, and appears to have been brought there by Ra for his use after it appeared to him the original Stargate was lost. We also thus learn Stargates can be moved.
Tin Man
- We learn that there are 4 robotic clones of SG-1 that live on Altair and cannot really leave. They have all of SG-1's human memories up to about mid-S1.
There but for the Grace of God
- There exists a piece of technology shaped like a mirror through which you can access alternate realities.
4. Overall takeaways
You can skip at most 15 out of 22 episodes (22 as I'm now counting Children of the Gods as 2 episodes this time, so the numbers match with what you google...) which is just absurd to me. Man!! That's such a foolish amount of episodes to skip. It really goes to show how different 90s TV was: whole seasons were just straight up filler or poorly written, or both. You could get away with that shit and people would tolerate it - viewership would be maintained. Now even with high viewership we're never guaranteed to keep certain shows (e.g. Wheel of Time). On one hand I miss having filler episodes for giving characters room to breathe, especially if the show was willing to take that room for those characters to show impacts of the plot upon them - but Stargate S1 was not. On the other hand, I kind of think tightening up the writing has sometimes helped the characters be more consistent in the first place. But it's hard to say that that was a causal factor here - I think we lost a lot of this scheme after the writer's strike in 2007 which had a lot of long term effects for network TV, where this kind of structure (23-season episode) had been endemic. But it's similarly hard to say as streaming also picked up roughly about the same time (and was one of the indirect causes of the 2007 strikes), so we could also blame streaming for shorter season, longer episodes, and more longer plot-arc based seasons (what some producers may have felt necessitated a move away from Episode Of The Week). Somewhere out there in media & communication studies someone has probably done a better essay tracking what went where and when.
So far the writing for Stargate has been not great. There's sort of a slow ramp-up learning curve as they settle in to the characters and start connecting dots a bit better between episodes despite this being an episodic kind of show - the characters should still remain consistent, and by the end of the season, they do have somewhat firmer personalities. This gets even better in Season 2, so it's a reason to keep watching: Sam Carter especially gets much better. Unfortunately, most of the plots of these episodes feel really retreaded - these are sci-fi plots we've definitely seen before. So S1: the plots don't feel fresh, and the characters aren't really worth watching for yet.
We already see a trend of Sam being used when there's a need for someone to fix advanced technology or explain advanced technology, while Daniel is used for basically every other reveal including scientific ones even though he shouldn't know some of this stuff because he's not a STEM person. While Teal'c has had a lot of cool moments this season, there hasn't been a ton of extensive Jaffa cultural or political worldbuilding, nor has there been a lot of System Lords cultural or political worldbuilding. He's basically just used as occasional exposition dump specifically when the plot requires it, even though realistically (even in-universe since the NID wants him so bad) you'd think that more intelligence would have been gotten out of him way long ago instead of at the 11th hour. This is what I usually mean by "not great pacing" when I'm being critical of Stargate, it's that I feel like someone's writing in a rugpull when it didn't have to be. If it's done well, I don't see the seams so obviously.
There's also a trend of potentially interesting but dark scenarios taken with absurd levity. It doesn't feel like it's intentionally trying to make light of dark scenarios, either to mock them or because it's what fans expect, it feels at this stage more like they want to discuss these creepy dark things and interact with them, but it's primetime TV, so we can't. It's kind of similar to the Star Wars movies to me, where you could tell interesting stories if you considered The Implications but most people don't and it's kind of this very tropey campy thing. Villains are bad, heroes are good, 1D kind of spectrum. I actually wonder sometimes if the audience was intended to be adult or young adult.
Neither Sam nor Daniel get a satisfying backstory but Sam is definitely the one who suffers the most from this as we know nothing about her (we at least know Daniel has emotional investment in the SGC because of his wife Sha're whom he occasionally references). The same can be said of Janet Fraiser who is a recurring character but is basically just a lady in a lab coat for all we know, even though she volunteered to take Cassandra in (c.f. Singularity). Teal'c has some backstory information given because of System Lord relation, and we also get a glimpse into Jaffa society and his personal family situation. Jack's backstory is explored somewhat, mostly by spelling out the story that was implied in the movie. In general there's not a lot of explorations of the characters beyond having it tie into the plot of the day, so there's quite a lot fic could do here to flesh that out. We don't have Teal'c's first take on the Tau'ri surface (let's not count Cold Lazarus, as he didn't get to see a whole lot). We don't have Sam and Daniel getting to know each other and bonding. Jack and Teal'c develop a fairly strong loyal bond between them (c.f. Bloodlines) but we don't see know how this was formed. Someone must surely have had a birthday; how was it celebrated if at all? What does Teal'c do when he's restless at night and cannot leave the SGC, is there a gym or pool or something he gets access to? Have any of the team done sleepovers for whatever reason (e.g. staying late one night for research or report filing)? Are there extended families involved at all?
SGC is in general full of military guy jarhead types. It's like no women work here except for 2-3. We see some elements of pushback against the military but they are really few and feel more tokenesque or placed for our heroes to be relatable, while the whole thing is ultimately dominated by the Honourable Servicemen kind of vibe. It's propagandistic and jingoistic in a similar way that copaganda is, repeating plotpoints that either suggest realism in or straight up teach military life, either directly (we don't leave our people behind, if we're both serving active duty officers we can't date because of chain of command, etc) or indirectly (DADT). There are believable scenarios of military honour and camaraderie and they come at the expense of any civilian attributes of life. The most annoying part that it continually rehashes is the depiction and justification of American military intervention, and the fact that it's all kept covered up as secret - a decision which also is justified by the cover-up being necessary to stop mass panic from impending alien invasion. In Season 1, it's not so bad, it's pretty easy to ignore. However - and it's wild to think it - but while we are already very cozy already with the super secret heroic USAF in S1, that will grow moreso and from what I remember this problem actually gets worse (as the scale of the cover-ups gets increasingly hard to believe, to the point that I don't think anybody born with smartphones could take the latter seasons at all seriously). It's kind of a bitter pill to be saying "actually, Season 1 is some of Stargate at its best". : /
Lastly, I appreciate the Humans Are Underdogs vibes here, and I'm sad to see we'll be losing that as the series goes on and it doubles down harder on the Team America World Police vibes. I like sci-fi a lot when the universe is reminding us how very young we are and how much we really don't know - early seasons Stargate has a lot of that.
5. Some Fic Recs Maybe?
Here I tried to target works of various kinds that only require S1 knowledge. Having allusions to later seasons is mostly OK but I'm looking for stuff that is spoiler-free, that only requires S1, or which primarily engages with topics or characters we saw in S1 (e.g. Hathor's attempted takeover of the SGC is fair game, Hathor's various misadventures behind the scenes as a System Lord in S2-S3 would proobably not be).
Revolution, bymorgan32
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Words: 69.7k
Rating: E
Pairing: Jack O'Neill/Teal'c
Canon-divergence from Children of the Gods. The first time Teal’c met Colonel Jack O'Neill he defied Apophis’ orders to kill the Tau’ri prisoners. The second time Teal’c met Colonel Jack O'Neill, it was in battle, and he again spared the Tau’ri commander’s life. When they met for a third time, it changed everything.
Not the first time I've recced it, but I've reread after my rewatch and damn it's even better than I remembered!! Jack/Teal'c, longfic canon divergence - my bookmarks say simply "I've wanted this fic forever." and it is SO TRUE. Every time I rewatch SG-1 I am awestruck by how shippy the Jack/Teal'c is (and Cam/Teal'c later in S9-10). I love this enemies to lovers take on them which is canon divergent from the start of the show where Teal'c doesn't take Jack up on his offer to save the captives and doesn't immediately switch sides, but Teal'c is still every bit the revolutionary atheist he is in canon. The Jaffa worldbuilding is pretty good and the Teal'c characterisation is phenomenal 🤩️
Canon knowledge required: S1E1 (Children of the Gods) is required, and the original movie would be helpful but in lieu of that, enough episodes of early SG-1 to know who the players are would help.
more things move than blood in the heart, by
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Words: 2.0k
Rating: T
Pairing: Jack O'Neill/Teal'c
The floor was polished, some kind of synthetic, composite stone. Indirect lighting, no windows. (No way to tell time.) Very clean, very modern. No shackles, no bloodstains on the floor. (Not yet.) You could almost pretend it wasn't a cell. You could almost pretend you didn't know what was coming next.
Nice Jack/Teal'c H/C set somewhere in S1. Teal'c's voice is nice in here, as is his loyalty to Jack <3
Canon knowledge required: S1E1&2 ("Children of the Gods") in order to know who the players are, that SG-1 is a team that does fieldwork on behalf of SGC through the Stargate, and S1E3 ("The Enemy Within") to know that there is an iris, and that Teal'c is more firmly on their side now. There's an allusion to Jack taking Teal'c home, which is purportedly the first time Teal'c ventures to the surface, so this must be set before S1E7 ("Cold Lazarus").
Bygones & Proper Introductions, by
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Words: 1.6k
Rating: G
Pairing: Gen (Daniel Jackson, Teal'c)
Written for the SG1 Friendathon. Prompt: “Daniel, Teal'c. Early season 1: the first time they put aside anger/guilt and tried friendship." Set sometime between COTG and “The Broca Divide” (S1E5).
I like this one, it has a bit more explanation as to why Daniel forgives Teal'c so readily and some added context that Teal'c does not forgive himself.
Canon knowledge required: S1E1&2 ("Children of the Gods") only.
I'll probably take about a week off and be back with Season 2.
