GALACTICA

Occasionally I write about other science fiction topics besides Battlestar Galactica. So today I present a review of Stargate SG-1 Season 1 which I just finished watching on DVD.

If you have yet to see Firefly or Lost - The Complete First Season, I would highly recommend you watch those shows first, both are much better. However, if you have already seen those shows and need a science fiction fix really bad, then Stargate SG-1 may keep you entertained at a reasonable price for the DVDs, but don’t expect it to be great.

Stargate SG-1 is based on a B movie which you do not need to watch in order to enjoy the series. The series is a lot better than the movie, which isn’t necessarily saying that much about the series. The pilot episode on the first DVD will summarize what you need to know about the movie as well as introduce the characters in the series.

The Stargate SG-1 team consists of four people, who unfortunately seem like cardboard cutouts and not real people. There’s Colonel Jack O’Neill, Captain Samantha Carter, Daniel Jackson, and to round out the team there’s an alien named Teal’c. I have no idea what the apostrophe is for.

Colonel O’Neill is this sarcastic wisecracking fellow who doesn’t behave as you’d expect from a real Air Force Colonel. He’s always disobeying orders yet he always comes out smelling like a rose.

Captain Carter is a beautiful blonde, and I’m sure the teenage boys who watch this show are all in love with her. Will there be some kind of sexual tension between her and Colonel O’Neill? Not much in season one, but there are hints that there will be more in subsequent seasons.

Daniel Jackson is an historian who studied ancient cultures, and he’s the Curious George of the group who always manages to get himself in trouble by walking off alone to explore something.

Teal’c is like a cross between Mr. Spock from Star Trek and Worf from Star Trek the Next Generation (minus the Klingon politics). Teal’c used to serve for the bad guys, the Goa’ulds, but in the pilot he inexplicably switches sides and joins the Stargate team.

This series is for the most part a knockoff of Star Trek. Instead of using the transporter to beam down to planets from a spaceship, the Stargate team uses the stargate to transport themselves from Earth to another planet via a “wormhole.” Most of the episodes in the first season are based on old Star Trek episodes. For example, just as in Star Trek, there are several episodes where the SG-1 team picks up alien diseases, but the pretty doctor at Stargate Command always manages to cure the disease before any regular characters die. As in Star Trek, everyone in the galaxy inexplicably speaks English. This worked for Star Trek, but for a modern show it seems pretty cheesy.

Until the final few episodes of the season, there is no arc. For the most part, you could watch the episodes in any order you wanted to and it wouldn’t change your understanding of the series. When the series finally does begin its ending arc, it annoys you with a flashback episode, and then it ends in the middle of the story, forcing you to buy the second season DVDs in order to find out what happens.

Fans of the show say it gets better, but based on season one, I have to say it’s a pretty mediocre show. However, I already ordered the DVDs for season two because I want to find out what happened.