I’m completely biased when recommending this show to people, I re-watch it at least once a year. Sometimes I take a few years off, but I’m in the middle of a rewatch now.
I watched it when it first ran, I was too young to really care about it in the first few seasons (good thing too since I might have lost interest) but by the time season 10 rolled out I was graduating and wanted the dvd set as a graduation present (which I never got)
If you’re looking for some kind of “deep” meaning in a show, or overarching message (beyond general team-work and helping each other gets the job done for everyone type stuff) in a show, I don’t personally think there is one, and would disappoint someone who wants one.
I like to think everything they talk about is pretty relevant even today. Politically they’re fairly neutral for US politics, though keep in mind it’s a show about a military team in a military base doing military things, so everything is pretty often making the military look good, or "just get rid of this damn red tape " on a few occasions, but they do a pretty good job of showing how absolutely wrong the military and government are, to the point where in real life the characters would all have been courtmartialled for disobeying idiotic military protocols and bad orders.
Daniel in particular can get preachy about doing the right thing no matter what, and O’Neill basically tells him " stop being so preachy" on a few occasions.
The pacing of the show picks up as the seasons go on, and it gets more action-filled in the latter half. They also start mixing a lot of philosophy type stuff in here and there. Less so on the later seasons.
Mild generalized plot ahead:
Season 5 is where they really start leaning toward continuing stories from earlier episodes. Also introduces a villain that will play major parts in seasons 6-8. One of the final episodes is a gut punch that introduces a new recurring character.
Season 6 introduces a villain that will start out small but eventually become galaxy-threatening, and continues into one of the post-series movies. Also expands on the second Stargate from Antarctica and how that got to be there.
Season 7 introduces an Ancient outpost, which leads them to what they need to get to Atlantis. Also Richard Dean Andersons less frequent appearance on the show.
Season 8 reintroduces the replicators as bad guys, and this time they’re not all blocky and insectoid. Also surprise return of a once-vanquished enemy. Actually like… 2 or 3 now that I think of it.
Season 9 introduces a new team leader (Ben browder, aka Chrichton from Farscape) and Claudia black (aeryn sun) is a recurring character that eventually becomes a full time member of the team. New villains introduced and shit hits the fan pretty quickly.
Season 10 is a futuristic holy crusade from evil energy aliens using humans to do their dirty work and subjugate another galaxy. A couple old villains pop up here and there but are usually smaller episode arcs or bottle episodes.
The show got canceled and the story never finished in the show run, but they had a few movies to try and wrap up the remaining plots that were supposed to take place over 1-3 more seasons.
If you want a good episode to start with, try season 4 episode 6 “window of opportunity”. It’s a Groundhog Day episode that has some pretty great comedic bits as well as, I think, a pretty good representation of sg1 as a whole. It’s got a little of everything.
If you want to skip to more modern style of TV that still feels early 00s, season 6 is a good place to start, but I’d recommend reading plot summaries for most of the earlier episodes if you do that. It’s time consuming but you won’t be lost.
If all that sounds unappealing… We’ll then I guess it’s not for you, but still give s4e06 a try just for gits and shiggles.
I’m completely biased when recommending this show to people
That is genuinely SO, SO good that you acknowledge that. Though totally appropriate here b/c I asked, and wanted your thoughts precisely because you see the good in it.:-)
Ofc the chief reason to watch it in the first place is all the philosophizing, but then the chief reason to RE-watch it would be mainly nostalgia - though ngl that might be enough right there, especially since iirc I hadn’t yet watched any of Farscape when I did my last re-watch of the SG-1 series.
To be clear it’s not quite “action” that I’m looking for, but something making the show worth watching, rather than a checkbox-ticking exercise, which unfortunately I recall many of the episodes being:-(. Then again, you’ve explained well that it was mainly the first few seasons that were that way, so indeed, perhaps if I skip those then it would be worth it. Or maybe there’s a list doing that for each episode individually - I’ll check it out sometime!:-)
Thanks for sharing your passion with me for a moment!:-)
I probably keep hitting on the action-y bits for the same reason I do when talking about star trek, modern audiences kind of expect shows with any sort of action to be SUPER action packed. My wife especially is guilty of this. The only slow type of show she likes are murder shows.
And honestly I’d say if you’re 15 minutes in and aren’t liking an episode, you can probably skip it in the first 4 or 5 seasons.
I’m weird. I tune out action just like I tune out non-action:-). I’m not sure how to describe it.
Like looking back, ST-TNG wasn’t really all that good, yet I liked it anyway and can’t really recall it being “slow” or anything. It’s not “dramatic” per se but it’s somehow interesting nonetheless.
Then DS9 blew my mind - and not (just) bc of the action, but the significantly deeper amount of drama they were able to work in by having a stable surrounding. e.g. Kira being an actual terrorist and being tempted in a way that most Starfleet officers would not be. What is the right thing to do… truly!?
But Enterprise, despite having MUCH more action, just wasn’t worth even a single watch-through. Maybe some of it, like the time travel, but especially at the end the show just sucked.:-( I’ve never watched a show that bad, but bc it was Star Trek… I forced myself through by playing games while the show was playing in the background:-).
So it’s not “action” that makes a story good, at least not alone, imho. Though I am no expert and don’t really know what does. Something about the craft of it - foreshadowing and callbacks and other tricks, pacing and revelations and character development, all of it. I don’t know enough to talk about or even recognize the specific artifacts of the craft, just the hints that it is vaguely there, or not, which due to different writers, producers, etc. can vary from episode to episode even within a single season.
I’m completely biased when recommending this show to people, I re-watch it at least once a year. Sometimes I take a few years off, but I’m in the middle of a rewatch now.
I watched it when it first ran, I was too young to really care about it in the first few seasons (good thing too since I might have lost interest) but by the time season 10 rolled out I was graduating and wanted the dvd set as a graduation present (which I never got)
If you’re looking for some kind of “deep” meaning in a show, or overarching message (beyond general team-work and helping each other gets the job done for everyone type stuff) in a show, I don’t personally think there is one, and would disappoint someone who wants one.
I like to think everything they talk about is pretty relevant even today. Politically they’re fairly neutral for US politics, though keep in mind it’s a show about a military team in a military base doing military things, so everything is pretty often making the military look good, or "just get rid of this damn red tape " on a few occasions, but they do a pretty good job of showing how absolutely wrong the military and government are, to the point where in real life the characters would all have been courtmartialled for disobeying idiotic military protocols and bad orders.
Daniel in particular can get preachy about doing the right thing no matter what, and O’Neill basically tells him " stop being so preachy" on a few occasions.
The pacing of the show picks up as the seasons go on, and it gets more action-filled in the latter half. They also start mixing a lot of philosophy type stuff in here and there. Less so on the later seasons.
Mild generalized plot ahead:
Season 5 is where they really start leaning toward continuing stories from earlier episodes. Also introduces a villain that will play major parts in seasons 6-8. One of the final episodes is a gut punch that introduces a new recurring character.
Season 6 introduces a villain that will start out small but eventually become galaxy-threatening, and continues into one of the post-series movies. Also expands on the second Stargate from Antarctica and how that got to be there.
Season 7 introduces an Ancient outpost, which leads them to what they need to get to Atlantis. Also Richard Dean Andersons less frequent appearance on the show.
Season 8 reintroduces the replicators as bad guys, and this time they’re not all blocky and insectoid. Also surprise return of a once-vanquished enemy. Actually like… 2 or 3 now that I think of it.
Season 9 introduces a new team leader (Ben browder, aka Chrichton from Farscape) and Claudia black (aeryn sun) is a recurring character that eventually becomes a full time member of the team. New villains introduced and shit hits the fan pretty quickly.
Season 10 is a futuristic holy crusade from evil energy aliens using humans to do their dirty work and subjugate another galaxy. A couple old villains pop up here and there but are usually smaller episode arcs or bottle episodes.
The show got canceled and the story never finished in the show run, but they had a few movies to try and wrap up the remaining plots that were supposed to take place over 1-3 more seasons.
If you want a good episode to start with, try season 4 episode 6 “window of opportunity”. It’s a Groundhog Day episode that has some pretty great comedic bits as well as, I think, a pretty good representation of sg1 as a whole. It’s got a little of everything.
If you want to skip to more modern style of TV that still feels early 00s, season 6 is a good place to start, but I’d recommend reading plot summaries for most of the earlier episodes if you do that. It’s time consuming but you won’t be lost.
If all that sounds unappealing… We’ll then I guess it’s not for you, but still give s4e06 a try just for gits and shiggles.
That is genuinely SO, SO good that you acknowledge that. Though totally appropriate here b/c I asked, and wanted your thoughts precisely because you see the good in it.:-)
Ofc the chief reason to watch it in the first place is all the philosophizing, but then the chief reason to RE-watch it would be mainly nostalgia - though ngl that might be enough right there, especially since iirc I hadn’t yet watched any of Farscape when I did my last re-watch of the SG-1 series.
To be clear it’s not quite “action” that I’m looking for, but something making the show worth watching, rather than a checkbox-ticking exercise, which unfortunately I recall many of the episodes being:-(. Then again, you’ve explained well that it was mainly the first few seasons that were that way, so indeed, perhaps if I skip those then it would be worth it. Or maybe there’s a list doing that for each episode individually - I’ll check it out sometime!:-)
Thanks for sharing your passion with me for a moment!:-)
I probably keep hitting on the action-y bits for the same reason I do when talking about star trek, modern audiences kind of expect shows with any sort of action to be SUPER action packed. My wife especially is guilty of this. The only slow type of show she likes are murder shows.
And honestly I’d say if you’re 15 minutes in and aren’t liking an episode, you can probably skip it in the first 4 or 5 seasons.
I’m weird. I tune out action just like I tune out non-action:-). I’m not sure how to describe it.
Like looking back, ST-TNG wasn’t really all that good, yet I liked it anyway and can’t really recall it being “slow” or anything. It’s not “dramatic” per se but it’s somehow interesting nonetheless.
Then DS9 blew my mind - and not (just) bc of the action, but the significantly deeper amount of drama they were able to work in by having a stable surrounding. e.g. Kira being an actual terrorist and being tempted in a way that most Starfleet officers would not be. What is the right thing to do… truly!?
But Enterprise, despite having MUCH more action, just wasn’t worth even a single watch-through. Maybe some of it, like the time travel, but especially at the end the show just sucked.:-( I’ve never watched a show that bad, but bc it was Star Trek… I forced myself through by playing games while the show was playing in the background:-).
So it’s not “action” that makes a story good, at least not alone, imho. Though I am no expert and don’t really know what does. Something about the craft of it - foreshadowing and callbacks and other tricks, pacing and revelations and character development, all of it. I don’t know enough to talk about or even recognize the specific artifacts of the craft, just the hints that it is vaguely there, or not, which due to different writers, producers, etc. can vary from episode to episode even within a single season.