There isn't really a word for my favorite genre of (American) television. It's not specifically sci-fi or fantasy or just a standard drama, it's stuff like Lost or Person Of Interest or even Arrow, those long and ambitious genre shows. But I don't think any time period was better for this "genre" than the mid 90s and early 2000s. Babylon 5. Buffy. The X-Files. Farscape. Deep Space Nine. I love this era of TV, as imperfect as many of these shows are, they all really suck you into their world and expertly toe the line between episodic one-offs and dramatic story arcs. Stargate SG-1 slots right into that niche from the very start, though it also follows the trend of many of these shows having a fairly slow first season.
In the Stargate movie which I haven't watched, Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson find an interstellar portal that sends them on a whirlwind adventure across the galaxy... that really just takes them to an Egypt planet. Stargate SG-1 continues a year after the events of that movie where the portal, now being held by the US military, suddenly reactivates thanks to the villains of that original movie (an alien species called the Ga'uld). Thus, Jack, Daniel, scientist Sam Carter, and a Ga'uld named Teal'c form a team to experiment with the Stargate, discover new worlds, and prepare themselves for another confrontation with the Ga'uld. What I found really interesting about SG-1 compared to many other sci-fi shows is just how quaint it is. Outside of the events of the movie, the cast is composed of roughly modern day Americans who know nothing about space or how to traverse it. Most of the episodes have them explore a new planet or try something new with the Stargate, and a lot of the time they mess up. There's something really satisfying about watching shows built on iteration, watching the cast mess up and learn from their mistakes. There's even plenty of military-related politics that I found pretty interesting. SG-1's first season isn't super serialized, though there's definitely a myth arc and a pretty fantastic final story arc, but you do get the feeling that the cast is more knowledgable than they were in the pilot episode. Speaking of which, the cast is pretty strong. Teal'c is definitely the highlight thanks to Christopher Judge's performance, but they all gain a solid rapport fairly quickly that makes even the weaker episodes enjoyable to watch.
Speaking of which, as you might expect from the first season of a sci-fi series from the late 90s, SG-1's first season has a lot of growing pains, particularly in its first half. I think the fundamental issue behind SG-1's rough start is the show's struggle to find its own voice compared to its feature film predecessor and other inspirations like Star Trek. For the former, the very rough pilot episode Children Of The Gods spends a long time having the characters summarize the plot of the Stargate movie. With clunky dialogue and utterly painful exposition, it doesn't take long for the series to become infinitely better once it puts that pilot behind it. Similarly, Michael Shanks, who plays Daniel, starts off the series trying to imitate James Spader in the movie. And once again, the show becomes way better once he drops that and tries to find his own voice. As far as the Star Trek inspiration goes, you can really tell throughout the first half that SG-1's writers are going through a greatest hits of episodic Star Trek cliches. You got the rapid-aging episode, the rapid-evolution episode, the evil double episode, and worst of all, the attempts at giving every episode a moral. Hell, one episode in particular flat-out reuses the plot of Code Of Honor, which was already one of the worst Star Trek episodes! While the show would do a better job of fleshing out its world in its second half, it does still suffer from fairly unoriginal episode ideas.
Highlights:
There But For The Grace Of God: With this episode as well as the one directly after it, the writers challenged themselves with taking premises that usually don't lead to any plot progression and making them some of the most important episodes of the season. On its own, this is a fun alternate universe episode with a tense ending that lets us see new sides of all the characters. It also packs in the big reveal that the Goa'uld is moments away from Earth, and that Daniel is the only one who knows.
Politics: I already mentioned that I love the political side of Stargate SG-1 so far, but befitting the title, this is the episode where it's at its best. So much of this episode is SGC sitting at a table fighting with the newly introduced Senator Kinsey over the fate of their program, but it's so gripping. Kinsey is such a realistic and insufferable antagonist, not unlike Kai Winn. He's everything wrong with the US, between only considering their expeditions a success if they bring back weapons and claiming that God will help them stop the Goa'uld, but he also has some genuinely good points, like the fact that the Stargate Program probably shouldn't be this secretive. Even more, we get yet another big bit of plot progression when Kinsey ends the episode deciding to shut down the Stargate program, raising the stakes even more for the finale. And did I mention that, even with everything I brought up, this was a clip show episode? The fact that I liked Politics this much despite 50% of it being reused is a testament to the quality of the new material.
Okay, so I need to address the elephant in the room here. Politics is a clip show episode, and from what I heard, it's not the only one in this show. I generally hate clip show episodes, Shades Of Gray is flat out my least favorite episode ever made, but that doesn't mean there isn't a way to pull them off well. You can use entirely original clips like Community, reorganize the clips to heighten the comedy like in Phineas And Ferb, or you can do what Stargate did and wring as much mileage out of every clip as possible. Politics feels like a reflection on how far the cast has gone since the pilot, we even learn about how some of the planets the team visited has been doing. This is a clip show done right, it feels purposeful and important, and I hope the clip shows to come will continue to live up to that bar.
Within The Serpent's Grasp: While it does leave a lot of loose ends, this was a hella tense finale. Putting the SG-1 team right in the middle of enemy territory makes for an incredibly climactic episode that brings O'Neill's Skaara subplot to a head and puts the final pieces in place for all-out war between Earth and the Goa'uld. This whole final arc has been fantastic and I can only hope Season 2 keeps up this momentum.
Overall, Stargate SG-1's first season is a fine if flawed start to the series. Its slow world-building and the development of its characters as explorers was what initially kept me engaged, even through the growing pains and many lackluster standalones, but it wasn't until that great ending story arc when I was finally hooked.
2/5 Stars
No comments:
Post a Comment