StarGate SG1

by Lorna, January 2001

I'm guessing most of you have seen the (1994) StarGate film, but you may have missed the series which followed it. The series started in 1997 and is currently in it's 6th and final season. The plot of the film is continued and many of the characters are still there, although they have different actors.

Plot

A quick run down of the plot of film and series.
The show is set in the present, centred around a military program known as the StarGate Program. The StarGate is a giant stone doughnut found in Egypt which acts as a portal to other stargates on different planets. Apparently a race called the Gou'ald (don't ask about pronunciation) have been masquerading as Egyptian gods and abducted loads of people from ancient cultures to use as slaves on different planets. A couple of thousand years later the military have got it working again and start heading off to different planets. After something of an incident in the film the series picks up the story a year later and the StarGate program is started in earnest. About a dozen 4 person teams are formed and go out exploring, occasionally finding happy bouncy people glad to see them, but generally finding somewhat irritated locals. They also periodically find some Goa'uld and get themselves in predicaments while trying to blow them to little biddy pieces.

Colonel Jack O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson best known as MacGyver) - The leader of SG1 (the team we follow around), played by Kurt Russell in the film. A veteran Special Forces operative who had some issues following the death of his son and his wife leaving. He has the unenviable task of trying to lead this group, sometimes has a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, but can always be relied upon to have a sarcastic come back.

Dr Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) - An archaeologist, anthropologist and linguist with multiple PhDs, but zero credibility with his peers by insisting that the pyramids were made by aliens. At the end of the film his character, played by James Spader remained on the planet with a local girl, but during the pilot episode of the series she is abducted and turned into a Goa'uld. Daniel spends the rest of the series trying to find her, trying to talk to everyone in sight and trying (usually unsuccessfully) to not get shot.

Captain (Dr) Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) - A female fighter pilot, astrophysicist and all round scientific smart arse. Along with Daniel she forms the brains of the operation, but unlike Daniel she is also a military officer more than capable of taking care of herself. She occasionally gets a little touchy on the female thing and doesn't seem to get involved with the bantering so much.

Tealc (Christopher Judge) - A jaffa (not a cake one who carries a baby symbiote that turn humans into Goa'ulds) who was the head guard for Apophis (bad Goa'uld dude) but helped save SG1 and consequently joined the team. He's very large, strong monosyllabic and basically scary. Also has zero sense of humour (or so he lets people think) and understands nothing of Earth culture...

Reveiwy thing

This series is very clever and I think it's a real shame that more people haven't seen it. Unfortunately unless you have satellite it's unlikely that you'll get to see it as Channel 4 are exceedingly random in showing it. A lot of the episodes are self contained "we go to a planet, locals have problem, we fix it". The more substantial episodes are those involving the Goa'uld and are frequently based on space ships and have big explosions! The characters are nicely portrayed and much more three dimensional than most of the Star Trek characters. There's a lot of humour, science, special fx, angst, history drama... erm... what else do you want? Like with any series there are a few dodgy episodes but for the most part they are excellent. If you can find tapes of this series, or find reruns, watch it!

Other Stuff

There are a few books out there, one series by Bill McCay was actually written as a continuation of the film before the series was shown. Hence it's a slightly odd alternate universe type of thing taking a completely different tack, but is quite interesting. Ashely McConnell did a novelisation of the pilot episode, Children of the Gods and has a couple of original books out, although I haven't read any of them. My brief check of Amazon.co.uk shows they have most of these items and videos of episodes most with customer reviews (see it's not just me!)

Above Picture © MGM

Links

 The Gateroom

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-04-20

Contents include - Bulletin Board/forum, Information, Images, Synopses, Reviews, People, Spoilers, News

Subjects include - Stargate SG1

This site is a reasonably good resource for Stargate. It's got a comprehensive character listing and a good episode list. The synopses vary in quality, but generally aren't very extensive. Many sections of the site are still being filled.
Attack of the frames! It's also very slow to actually run, a bit cluttered in places and has scripting all over the place.

 Stargate Transcripts

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-04-20

Contents include - Synopses, Spoilers

Subjects include - Stargate SG1

An extensive collection of stargate transcripts, but not complete, some are missing from all seasons. But those that are there seem accurate.
A bit multicoloured and all of the links to other sections of the main site seem broken. But it's useable.

 Gateworld

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2003-03-09

Contents include - News, Spoilers, People, Synopses, Information, Bulletin Board/forum

Subjects include - Stargate SG1

A news and episode guide for Stargate and it's potential spin off series. The news is nicely collated into categories and the relevent episode pages. The episode guides are pretty detailed and have lots of interesting comments and analysis.
It's got a funky blue blobbly background... other than that it's fairly standard.

 Official MGM Stargate Site

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-07-28

Contents include - Information, Shop, Images, People, News

Subjects include - Stargate SG1

For an official site, this one isn't half bad. The information on cast, news (aka Announcements) and behind the scenes phot's is up-to-date. The episode guides are fairly brief and only get up to the forth season, but several of them have video clips available.
A bit graphic intensive, but I think it looks great. Very stylish and fits nicely with the series.

Decent site, with a clear FAQ, that taught me a couple of things I didn't already know (the gate has a ninth chevron, which has never been used).
Simple to navigate, quick to load.

 Heliopolis

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-07-28

Contents include - Fanfiction, Links

Subjects include - Stargate SG1

This is one of the biggest archives of Stargate SG1 fanfiction on the web, there must be thouands of fics here. The site usually has an amazing search function on it allowing you to do very detailed searches, however the search has been down for a while, and they don't seem to be taking submissions either. Hopefully this is temporary.
Fairly basic and straightforward. I do wish they'd fix the funky bits though :O(

 fanfiction.net

Link submitted by Sulkyblue on 2002-07-28

Contents include - Fanfiction, Bulletin Board/forum

Subjects include - X-Files, Gerry Anderson , X-Men, Star Wars, Angel, Farscape, Babylon 5, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pratchett, Books, Comics, Movie Site, Star Trek - General, Stargate SG1, TV Show, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Enterprise, Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Dark Angel, Sliders, Highlander, Charmed, Blake's 7, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Red Dwarf, Star Trek: TNG, Dr Who, Firefly

If you want fanfiction, go here. This site is absolutely immense and beautifully layed out. I recon there's about 210 shows and 15,000 stories in the tv section alone. This site has many nice features - Categorised - sorted into large categories, like tv, comics, movies. Then sorted into smaller sections by tv show. Updated regularly - Updates appear every few hours, depending on how many authors are writing for a particular section. Author searches - each author has their own page, giving a full list of their fic's, links to their homepage, their favorite authors, whatever they wanna put there really. Discussion forums - if you are an author yourself, there's plenty of help available. Ratings - each fic has a summary, rating, word count and record of last update. You can even change the site colour scheme! How much more do you want?!
Brilliant. Fat loading and simple. You can even change the colour scheme if you want.

 Astrogate Stargate Forums

Link submitted by Vern on 2002-09-30

Contents include - Fanfiction, Bulletin Board/forum, Synopses, Spoilers

Subjects include - Fandom, Stargate SG1

A place where you can hang out, and chat about Stargate and sci-fi.
A php/template based forum.