Stargate
Written by Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Original release date: October 28, 1994
Mission briefing. We open in the north African desert in 8000 B.C. A giant pyramid-shaped spaceship lands, scaring the crap out of the loincloth-dressed humans—except for one who approaches the ship.
Cut to a dig in the same region in 1928. The head of the dig, Dr. Langford, arrives with his daughter Catherine to make an amazing discovery: a giant ring. They find some kind of fossil under it.
Cut to the present day. Dr. Daniel Jackson is giving a lecture on the subject of the pyramids. He theorizes that the pyramids were built long before they were believed to have been erected. His theory is considered laughable, and everyone walks out on him after deriding his theory.
One person who stayed for his whole lecture is Dr. Catherine Langford, now much older, obviously. She’s working for the U.S. Air Force and would like to offer him a job translating ancient hieroglyphs. This job can prove his theory right, according to her. He’s reluctant to take the job up to the point where she reminds him that he’s been evicted from his apartment and his grants have all run out. He’s got nowhere to go.
Two Air Force officers go to the O’Neil house. General West has reactivated Colonel Jack O’Neil. O’Neil himself barely notices they’re there. He’s been a mess since his son accidentally killed himself with O’Neil’s own gun.
Jackson is brought to an Air Force facility deep inside Creek Mountain. They show him the coverstones, which have glyphs on them. Jackson trashes the translation that was done, and provides a new one, that ends with the word “stargate.”
O’Neil (who has a military haircut once again) comes in and announces that this is classified, and all information must go through the military. O’Neil explains to Langford that he’s been put in charge in case she succeeds.
Two weeks later, Jackson’s at a standstill—until he realizes that the glyphs on the outer track of the stone aren’t hieroglyphs, they’re renderings of constellations. Jackson is instructed to brief the military on what he’s found, and he tells General West that the six symbols are constellations that provide the six reference points you need for a location in three-dimensional space. But you need a seventh symbol: the point of origin. Jackson says it’s the symbol below the other six, but one of the other scientists says that symbol isn’t on “the device.”
At O’Neil’s nod, West authorizes Jackson to see the stargate, which Langford says is made of a mineral never seen on Earth. He’s blown away, and he finds a variation on the seventh symbol. West authorizes the seventh chevron to be added, and the technicians dial the sequence. The dialing programs shakes the crap out of the complex—which is why it’s in a missile silo—and after the seventh chevron is locked, a wormhole appears.
They send a MALP through the wormhole, clearing the silo. The telemetry from the MALP—which they somehow get instantaneously, even though it’s impossible for any kind of information to come that quickly over interstellar distances—says they’re in another galaxy “on the other side of the known universe.” Okay.
The wormhole closes, but they got lots of information from the MALP before it closed. There is a gate on the other side, but the symbols on it are different. That scotches West’s plan to send a reconnaissance team. If they can’t dial back, they’re screwed. However, Jackson says that he can dial back. O’Neil is skeptical, but West puts him on the team.
O’Neil then goes to where the fossil is being kept—the fossil that they’ve kept secret from Jackson.
Once again, the gate is dialed. O’Neil leads an eight-person team through, along with a bunch of equipment. Jackson goes through last.
They arrive in a darkened room, the trip through having caused everyone to freeze—they’re covered in ice. But it passes, and they move through the stone structure until they reach a desert. The building they were in looks like it’s straight out of ancient Egypt. Adding to that: the big-ass pyramid sticking up out of the ground. On the other hand, there are three moons in the sky.
Jackson announces, to everyone’s chagrin, that he can’t realign the stargate because he can’t find a tablet like the coverstone to tell him what the order of coordinates is. O’Neil orders Kawalsky to set up a base camp—at which Jackson isn’t especially welcome—while O’Neil himself sets up the nuclear bomb he brought along just in case.
One of the airmen tosses Jackson’s briefcase at him, and it falls down a ravine. As Jackson is chasing down his books and notes, he sees animal tracks. He finds a four-legged beast that’s been domesticated, based on the harness. Jackson also spooks it, and it runs—with its reins wrapped around Jackson’s leg. After dragging him through the desert for a bit—with O’Neil, Kawalsky, and Brown going after him—they come across a mine filled with people. Brown reports that the readings indicate that they are mining the same material the stargate is made out of.
O’Neil instructs Jackson to talk to them (“You’re the linguist”). When they see the pendant that Langford gave him for luck, they all bow down.
One of the younger ones, Skaara, fetches Kasuf, one of the elders. Kasuf gives Jackson water. In exchange, he gives Kasuf a candy bar. Kasuf invites them back to their village. En route, one of the kids steals Jackson’s handkerchief, but Skaara gives it back.
They arrive at the village and bow down before a larger version of the symbol on Jackson’s pendant. Jackson and O’Neil realize that they think Ra sent the four of them.
A horn sounds in the town, causing everyone to run about and close up the gates. Ferretti tries to contact O’Neil to say they have to abandon base camp thanks to the storm, but it doesn’t come through. O’Neil tries to go back, but the villagers won’t let them. There’s some serious miscommunication, which includes gunfire, before Skaara manages to show O’Neil the approaching sandstorm.
There’s a big feast that night, as various attempts at communication are made that only occasionally successful. Jackson tries to get Kasuf to show them what the symbols are for the stargate, but it becomes quickly apparent that writing is forbidden to these people.
And then Kasuf has Jackson whisked away to a tent, where he’s joined by Kasuf’s daughter, Sha’re, who tries to take her clothes off before he stops her. (Why, I have no idea.) She also at one point draws the symbol for Earth.
Ferretti and his group are holed up in the building that holds the stargate, waiting out the storm. Suddenly, a pyramid-shaped ship lands above them. Ferretti’s team are attacked one by one by Ra’s Jaffa. Ferretti himself is brought to Ra’s sarcophagus.
O’Neil bonds with Skaara over a lighter. Skaara attempts to smoke one of O’Neil’s cigarettes, impersonating all his mannerisms as well. But his actual first experience with a cigarette is nasty, and he stomps it out after one puff. However, O’Neil lets him keep the lighter. But when Skaara tries to touch O’Neil’s gun, he gets medieval on him, causing Skaara to run away scared.
Skaara takes the lighter to his friends and shows it off. O’Neil later goes to Skaara to ask where Jackson is. His attempts to communicate are a comedy of errors, but eventually he tracks Jackson to the catacombs where Sha’re took him. Jackson has found hieroglyphs that tell the story of this world. Ra was a member of a dying race that was looking for a way to extend its life. (We see a creature that looks a lot like an Unas.) Ra found Earth, took one human as a host, and set himself up as a leader. But there was an uprising, so he left through the stargate and started over on this world, where he outlawed reading and writing so that there would be no further rebellion.
Kawalsky finds a tablet that shows the six symbols needed to dial the gate, but the part with the point of origin has worn off. He can’t get them home.
The sandstorm has passed, so O’Neil, Kawasky, Brown, and Jackson head back to base camp. Skaara and several of his friends follow along. O’Neil and the gang are rather shocked to see the big-ass spaceship. Brown gives Jackson a pistol and the four of them head to the structure where they find stuff and spent shells lying around, but no sign of Ferretti or the others.
Brown is killed by a Jaffa’s staff weapon, and Kawalsky’s attacked as well. O’Neil drags Jackson down to the stargate and the bomb—but it’s been taken. Then the ring transporter operates and beams down another Jaffa who takes O’Neil and Jackson prisoner and bring them before Ra and his retinue of small children. Ra brings the bomb before them, accusing them of trying to kill him. For his part, Jackson is appalled by the bomb’s presence.
O’Neil tries to break free, and he manages to grab a staff weapon and kill one Jaffa. Jackson jumps in front of a staff weapon blast intended for O’Neil and is killed, while Ra is protected by the children, who all rush to stand in front of Ra when O’Neil aims his staff weapon at them. O’Neil can’t bring himself to fire on kids, and he’s disarmed, and tossed in a dungeon filled with waist-deep water, along with Kawalsky, Ferretti, and Freeman.
Ra releases gliders out of the pyramid and they attack the village, killing many. Skaara and his friends return to the village after rifling through the Air Force stuff in base camp. Skaara is devastated, and Kasuf says they should never have helped the strangers.
Jackson wakes up in a sarcophagus, stunned to find his wounds wholly healed. He confronts Ra, who is impressed with how far humanity has advanced. However, he feels that he created human civilization, and now he can destroy it. He’s going to enhance O’Neil’s bomb with the mineral they mine (naquadah) and send it through the gate back to Earth.
Ra calls an assembly to witness an execution. Even as he does, Sha’re tells Skaara and the others what Jackson told her about their people’s origins. Skaara goes back to the base camp and retrieves the weapons. Skaara uses O’Neil’s lighter to get Jackson’s attention so that, when Ra orders him to execute O’Neil, Kawalski, Ferretti, and Freeman, instead he turns his staff weapon on Ra’s Jaffa while Skaara and the others shoot into the sky, causing chaos. In the ensuing confusion, several people are killed, including Freeman, but O’Neil, Jackson, Kawalsky, Ferretti, Skaara, and Sha’re, among others, get away.
As they hide in a cave, O’Neil—partly at Jackson’s insistence—reveals the full mission. After Jackson figured out the stargate on this side, he and the rest of the team were to go back. O’Neil was to stay behind and detonate the bomb so that there’d be no threat to Earth. (Nice little suicide mission for the guy who’s lost his will to live.) But now Ra has the bomb and he’s going to use it to blow up Earth.
Ra uses a hand device to kill the Jaffa whom he blames for allowing O’Neil and the others to escape.
Jackson finds out, to his surprise, that he and Sha’re are married. So he figures, what the heck, and they consummate the marriage. The next day, Jackson sees Skaara drawing on the wall of the cave about their victory. From that drawing, he’s able to figure out what the point-of-origin symbol is.
A Jaffa comes to the village searching for O’Neil and the others, but Skaara helps bring him down. Kasuf is scared to death until he realizes that the Jaffa is just a normal human under his armor.
Posing as a caravan taking tribute to Ra, they lead an assault on the pyramid. O’Neil sets the bomb to go off in seven minutes. O’Neil tells Jackson that he’ll dismantle the gate on Earth while O’Neil makes sure the bomb goes off. But then a Jaffa attacks and kills Sha’re before O’Neil can kill him. When another Jaffa takes the rings down to send the bomb to Earth, Jackson steps into the matter stream with Sha’re’s corpse, bringing her to the sarcophagus to revive her. Meanwhile, O’Neil and the Jaffa get into a donnybrook, and Kawalsky, Ferretti, Skaara and the others are pinned down by Ra’s gliders. Kawalsky surrenders, but then Kasuf comes over the hill with the entire rest of the village, who overrun the two Jaffa who’d been piloting the gliders.
Jackson gets attacked by Ra, but manages to get away via the rings at the last second. Seeing victory slipping through his fingers, Ra preps his ship for takeoff. O’Neil can’t turn the bomb off, and then they both get the idea of using the rings to send the bomb to Ra’s ship before it can achieve escape velocity.
The natives are thrilled. They all cheer, Skaara and his friends also salute O’Neil, and Jackson and Sha’re kiss.
Jackson decides to stay behind with his new wife—it’s not like he had much of a life left on Earth—while O’Neil has decided that life might be worth living after all. The three Air Force officers head back through the gate back to Earth…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Devlin and Emmerich never really got the how-big-the-universe-is memo. Abydos (never named out loud in the story) is identified as being in another galaxy on the other side of the known universe (which is a meaningless phrase given the size and sprawl of the universe), which is so incalculably far away that the notion that they can track it with their little circle-on-a-map is laughable. (The TV show will correct this to having Abydos actually be very close to Earth, relatively speaking.)
Trivial matters. Several items that we’d also see in the TV series are seen here, though not named: Abydos, the MALP, the Jaffa, naquadah, a ha’tak, and of course the Goa’uld. The base with the stargate is Creek Mountain rather than Cheyenne Mountain, though it’s the same base as the TV show (with only minor design changes between movie and series). We also see a sarcophagus with its restorative powers (it resurrects both Jackson and Sha’re, and allows Ra to maintain his same youthful appearance for 10,000 years).
The flashbacks show that Ra’s prior form looks very much like the Unas, whom the TV show will establish as the previous hosts of the Goa’uld before they took on humans, but Ra’s death indicates that the Unas-like form is his “true” form. It’s weird. (The fossils they find, though, look vaguely like a Goa’uld parasite…)
I referred to Ra’s armored guards as Jaffa for lack of anything better to call them (the script identifes them as Anubis and Horus, interestingly enough). Their stomachs are bare (as are many of Ra’s palace subjects) with no sign of the X-shaped pouch for a larval Goa’uld.
The characters of O’Neil (spelled O’Neill in the series), Jackson, Kawalsky, Ferretti, both Doctors Langford, Sha’re, Skaara, and Kasuf will all reappear in the TV series, all but the last two recast. Ra and West will both be referenced again, but not seen. While the technicians who operate the gate are all civilians in the film, it will be consistently operated by Air Force personnel in the series.
Three of the actors in the film will return on TV. Alexis Cruz and Erick Avari will reprise their respective roles as Skaara and Kasuf throughout SG-1, while Richard Kind, who played one of the linguists, will return in two episodes of Atlantis as Lucius Lavian.
Chevron seven locked. On the one hand, this really isn’t a very good movie. There are some nifty ideas here, but the actual plot is pretty dire.
On the other hand, it makes a dandy pilot for a TV show that can take those nifty ideas and flesh them out. It’s to the credit of the TV producers that they took all the elements that Devlin and Emmerich threw at the wall and made a really impressive tapestry out of them.
Still, there isn’t much to like here. James Spader is certainly charismatic enough (I actually watched an episode of The Blacklist before watching the movie, not to mention seeing the latest Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer, and his voice and his ability to use it to good effect really is amazing, and has remained so for two decades), but ultimately this is pretty much the same plot as half the B-movies of the 1940s and 1950s with better special effects. The hard-bitten military dude teamed up with the wimpy scientist who just wants everyone to get along was a cliché when we saw it in the first Hulk comic book in 1962, and it didn’t age well into the 1990s. John Diehl’s Kawalsky and French Stewart’s Ferretti were actually more interesting characters than the nominal lead, as Kurt Russell just phones in his performance here, bringing no subtlety to a role that’s supposed to be a person in pain, and instead comes across as a person who needs an antacid.
There’s no strong sense of characterization here. They’re not people, they’re clichés, and they’re fulfilling their appointed role in the cliché handbook to the letter, from O’Neil’s unconvincing new lease on life to Jackson’s sudden bravery to all the Air Force guys who don’t get billing being killed to O’Neil’s “give my regards to King Tut, asshole,” which is such a painfully constructed catch-phrase that you just want to vomit. The notion of the gods of Egypt (or at least one of them) being an alien is an interesting one, but the movie doesn’t really do anything with it beyond an excuse to dress Jaye Davidson up in snazzy period outfits.
The beginnings of the TV franchise are all here, and it’s to the credit of Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright that they saw the potential. But this movie itself is pretty nowhere.
Keith R.A. DeCandido is currently working on a Stargate SG-1 novel entitled Kali’s Wrath, which should be published later this year by Fandemonium Books. His SG-1 short story apppeared in Fandemonium’s first Stargate anthology Far Horizons in 2014.
The movie is enjoyable enough to watch when going for a full-bore Stargate rewatch, but I agree that the series basically took the best parts of a lackluster movie and made something really good from it.
A couple points, for completionist sake:
If we’re going for the movie spelling of “O’Neil,” shouldn’t we be using the movie spelling of “Sha’uri?”
The character of Ra does end up appearing in Moebius at the tail end of Season 8, but it’s entirely possible they didn’t/couldn’t get Jaye Davidson back in the role, since he remains masked for his entire appearance.
Lesson one. – Don’t be brave, run away with everyone else.
I have so many problems with this movie. The worst is that it’s boring. It’s incredibly slow-paced, dragging everything out far longer than it needs to be. There really isn’t very much that happens over the course of the film. A typical SG-1 episode fit more ideas into its first act than the movie had in an entire two hours.
And the failure of imagination is staggering. They came up with a premise that had fantastic, limitless potential — a portal that could take you anywhere in the universe in an instant — and all they could think of to do with it was to rehash Ancient Egypt. We already had Ancient Egypt. What a total waste.
And there are so many problems with the concept, some (but not all) of which the series managed to fix. For one thing, why did the military need Dr. Jackson? If they already had six of the chevrons, why not just try each of the glyphs in turn for the seventh until they got it? And the constellation thing is silly, because you can’t use constellations as “points” in 3D space for defining coordinates. They only exist as tricks of perspective as seen from Earth. The stars in a given constellation generally aren’t physically associated with or near each other at all; they’re just in roughly the same direction from us. You could use specific stars as coordinate references, but not constellations.
The one thing the movie got right that the series ended up ignoring is that it realized the constellations would look different from different planets, so the two Stargates had different glyphs. The series simplified this by using a single galaxy-wide set of glyphs, which raises its own problems. (I like to think the glyphs were Ancient symbols first, and past civilizations defined the constellations based on the glyphs’ shapes. But I’m getting ahead of things now.)
The communication with the MALP doesn’t bother me, since the signal is presumably coming through the wormhole, as they interpreted it on the series. But “the other side of the known universe” is ridiculous, as Keith explained.
Sha’uri (as Sha’re was called in the movie) is a problematical character because she has no character to speak of; she’s basically just a sex object. She’s “given” to Daniel and that’s pretty much the extent of the basis for their relationship. This movie is not great with the gender roles.
The movie’s portrayal of the alien that possessed Ra was deeply implausible. How does a humanoid alien fit inside a human body to possess it? The series’ reinterpretation of the aliens as Goa’uld, small snakelike symbionts that wrap around the brainstem, makes considerably more sense. I like the idea that the “alien Ra” seen in the movie was really an Unas host that Ra ditched for the human boy. (I recall a novel that tried to reconcile the movie with the series by claiming that Ra was a different kind of alien than the Goa’uld, but I wasn’t crazy about that explanation.)
Also, giving Ancient Egypt credit for starting the entirety of human civilization is very ethnocentric. Sure, they were one of the oldest civilizations, but they were quite insular for most of their history and probably didn’t have that much effect on the cradles of civilization elsewhere like the Indus Valley or the Yellow River — and they obviously had no influence over the civilizations that arose independently in the Americas. Come to think of it, the movie didn’t handle race any better than it handled gender. There was only one nonwhite character among the Earth/military protagonists — a black guy named “Brown,” no less — and he got killed halfway through. So pretty much all the people of color in the movie were backward natives, villains, and redshirts. Not very progressive.
I’m with you, Keith — this is a mediocre B-movie stretched out to fill a big-budget blockbuster. The filmmaking technology was state-of-the-art, but the ideas and attitudes were relics of an earlier time. The “ancient astronauts built the pyramids” meme was big in the ’60s and ’70s, but by 1994 it was as stale as disco. This was a ridiculous movie, and I agree that the makers of the TV series did an astonishing job taking this flimsy, silly premise and building it up into the richest, most detailed SFTV universe since Star Trek.
You know, the most bizarre part of this whole thing is the fact that novelization was nominated for a Hugo award. I’ve read it, but I didn’t think it was that good.
The best thing about this movie is Jaye Davidson. Oh my, yes.
This seems to be a good place to compare and contrast the movie and the series, as once we get into the seasons, we’ll be focusing on those and the movie will be forgotten. The relationship between Jack and Daniel, the use of technology, how different actors played (ostensibly) the same characters, etc.
I actually didn’t have too much difficulty with Spader’s version of Daniel Jackson. With far less screen time than Michael Shanks, of course he’s going to seem like the “wrong” one, because we know Shanks so much better – but I think Shanks actually followed on to Spader’s characterization quite well, and then built on that. Russell and RDA, on the other hand, play Jack very differently, and I vastly prefer the latter. The script is better, yes – although in RDA’s case, it’s only somewhat relevant – but it’s also a more sympathetic version of the character, to my eyes.
Another Alias @@.-@ – Was it the novelization, or the screenplay?
This movie gets two big kudos from me: first, the natives did not speak English; second, just knowing ancient Egyptian from hieroglyphs did not mean Jackson could understand the spoken form.
It failed in a lot of other ways, but I will always give it praise and credit for that.
It’s interesting that the differences between O’Neill’s outlook on the world (militarism) and Jackson’s (pacifism and diplomacy) will become one of the basis of the first 5 seasons of SG-1, ending with Jackson leaving the team and ascending. The seeds are here, but the characters don’t talk that much with each other about it.
@3
My impression from the movie was that Ra kind of took possession of the human’s body not physically entered it.
@3 Re: the chevrons, I tried to make sense of it and came up with this theory: what if the reference points were stars, not constellations? Probably the brightest stars as seen from Earth. Maybe the brightest star of each constellation, the chevron being the symbol of a star – as in “Regullus = alpha Leonis = symbol of constellation Leo.”
@7: I agree, this movie may have some major technobabble issues, but it sure got the linguistic right – and how many SF movies do that? (No, seriously. Are there any others? I love made up languages.)
Tessuna @10 – Woo, conlangs! How about Marc Okrand’s Atlantean from the Disney movie Atlantis?
Christopher: to be fair, the line about Ra creating human civilization comes from Ra himself, and he isn’t exactly an unbiased source.
Ryamano: Actually, Ra’s very last scene right before the bomb goes off indicates that the previous alien body is inside Jaye Davidson’s body.
Meredith: Davidson wasn’t all that and a bag of chips, either, as the movie required almost no acting from him. He just got to be the generic super-villain and it wasn’t even that good — nowhere near his breakout turn in The Crying Game. Peter Williams and the other various Canadians did a much better job with assorted other Goa’uld in the series.
Another Alias: It was the movie itself that received a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form), which it lost to the TNG finale “All Good Things…” No movie novelization, or tie-in novel, has ever even sniffed a Hugo nomination.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Ra did actually appear in “SG-1”, in the Season Eight episode “Moebius, Part I”. He also appeared in the direct-to-DVD film “Continuum”.
@krad
I guess Stephen Molstad or whoever wrote his author info for the ID4 novels got mixed up or tried to pad Molstad’s resume.
I remember seeing this in the theaters when it first came out. I pitched it to other prospective viewers as being a sort of Indiana Jones and The Children Of Dune kind of movie with some rather interestingly played notions and pretty good visual execution, but not much else. When I heard that a TV series was being developed I was suprised and underwhlemed; I though the movie was rather fun and used otherwise eyeroll-worthy tropes in a halfway smart way, but I didn’t think there was really enough there to fill out a whole series. Boy, was I wrong!
Any movie where Kurt Russell says: “Give my regards to King Tut!” is not a complete failure. In that brief moment it’s Big Trouble in Little Egypt.
“…but ultimately this is pretty much the same plot as half the B-movies of the 1940s and 1950s with better special effects.”
I wish we had more of these. Because I’ll take hokey, half-baked sci-fi actioners over superhero tedium any day. Obviously they have just as much if not more potential for expansion.
“…the actual plot is pretty dire.” Damn, that’s cold.
Keith @12 – Who said I was looking at his acting? I 100% agree with you on that point. And yet. :D
@@@@@ 3
The gender roles were not perfect, but more substantial than some other sci-fi of that era. Without Dr. Langford, Jackson would not have joined the program. Langford also pushed back against the militarization of her project. Once on Abydos, Sha’uri is the one who helps Jackson with his translations and pronunication of the language. She’s the one who broke the taboo about writing and showed Jackson where to find other symbols. Also, Sha’uri is the one who motivates her brother and his friends to rise up against their oppressors and help the explorers by sharing what she’s learned about the history of their people. I wouldn’t say she was just a sex object, despite the “daughter of the chief” trope.
Oh seconded. So very seconded. I don’t mind the Marvel stuff so badly, GotG and the Thor franchise hit both my campy SF and my campy sword and sorcery pleasure centre, but DC’s offerings have beend eadly dull. I would love a Forbidden Planet or Earth Versus the Flying Saucers SF movie (but please, merifcul gods, not a remake of those movies). Something old fashioned and fun without worrying if it was being taken seriously enough.
One thing I never understood (and that the series continued to err on, in my opinion) is that if the stargates are one-way wormholes (as I think is established at one point?), then how do communications work in both directions?
@20
Yep, and it’s odd to criticize a movie for having an old-fashioned B-movie plot when there’s now a mega-industry built around them with superheroes. And for whatever reason, when we do get a good science fiction movie that hits that B-movie sweet spot, like with Edge of Tomorrow, it hardly gets noticed.
Quick correction: Ra DOES appear on SG-1 in a later episode, but without any dialog since he’s played by a different actor. He shows up in a group of System Lords.
It’s not a MALP in the movie. It’s a “remote probe from MIT”.
MALP stands for “Mobile Analytical Lab Platform”, btw.
Keith: Your bio at the end says “Keith R.A. DeCandido is currently working on a Stargate SG-1[/i] novel entitled Kali’s Wrath[/i],” but “entitled” should be “titled.” The two words have different meanings, and “entitled” makes no sense in this usage. It’s a common mistake. :)
@25 – Keith used “entitled” correctly. Google the word, look at the second definition: to give (something, especially a text or work of art) a particular title.
KRAD, I could be wrong, but I believe that Meredith was talking about Jaye Davidson as good looking, and not necessarily a good villain in the movie. I agree. lol. Also, I don’t know why, but it bugs me that all the pictures in the article are from the movie except that last shot of Sha’uri with the back of Jackson’s head is from the TV show. Not a big deal, but I’m trying to remember what the actress from the film looked like. At any rate, I like the movie, despite all of the things that you bring up from the film. I agree with them all, but it came out at the right time for me. I was in sixth grade, first learning about ancient Egypt and Rome and Greece and having my sixth grade teacher foster a love of history in me that remains to this day and thenthis movie came out so, I have a special place in my heart for it. But I do agree, it was an okay movie with some bad parts, but it made for a GREAT TV show.
@22 Yeah, Edge of Tomorrow dud get noticed. Specifically it got noticed as a movie with that crazy-ass scientology dude in it. Well the crazy-ass scientology dude that isn’t JonnyT, at least. You literally could not pay me enough to go see one of his movies, no matter what it was about. I know I’m not alone in that. I’ll admit, of late, it has become harder and harder to find a movie I actually want to watch and hasn’t been botched in the casting or directorial stakes. However, none of that matters with Stargate. I liked that movie, I thought it was good fun, and I cheerfully watched both its tv series and would watch more movies like if I got the chance.
@19/PsiPhiGrrrl: Granted, Sha’uri did contribute some things to the plot, but I’m talking specifically about her relationship with Daniel, or rather, the lack thereof. She’s not given enough characterization to make the whirlwind romance feel justified, so she ends up feeling like little more than the “gift” she was initially presented as.
It just continues to bewilder me how, in this and so many other ways, Emmerich and Devlin managed to spend such a large amount of time accomplishing so very, very little.
@21/Brian_E: As for why signal is two-way when the matter transmission is only one way, here’s a discussion about that I participated in on a BBS a decade or so ago:
http://www.exisle.net/mb/index.php?/topic/18907-matter-and-energy-in-the-stargate-wormhole/
To quote myself:
As for the signals, I don’t think those even go through the wormhole, but through the subspace link between Stargates. We know the gates can communicate without wormholes — the fact that they can sense an incoming signal and start spinning/lighting chevrons before the wormhole is even established proves that, as did “Avenger 2.0,” which showed that the gates exchanged periodic updates through subspace, evidently without opening wormholes. Which leads me to wonder why the SGC, Atlantis, and Destiny teams always needed to open wormholes to communicate. We saw the Goa’uld use communication spheres to speak through closed Stargates, in the first-season finale and later. Why couldn’t the Tau’ri ever figure out the same trick?
@29
To be fair, they don’t completely understand the gate system or the Ancient’s technology that underpins them. They have a crude idea, and with technobabble version of poking it with a stick have worked out how to make it doe something, but I think it is mentioned that to even get the gate to work they have to ignore dozens of error and other messages. It is all a bit cargo-cultish.
@10. The animated Superman/Batman: Apocalypse has some spoken Kryptonian between Superman and Supergirl.
Similarly, the Young Justice TV series has characters speaking alien languages (the aliens are Kroloteans, Rannians, and Lobo, but they may all be speaking Interlac [it sounds like the same language]), and Atlantean (Aqualad and Lagoon Boy). Only the Atlantean gets subtitled.
@28
Well, it’s yours and others loss then. Edge of Tomorrow is a lot of fun, and Emily Blunt is especially good in it.
I couldn’t care less about the personal beliefs of actors, just as long as it’s not blatantly forced into the narrative (EoT has no Scientology message I could discern). And if you dislike Tom Cruise that much, then there’s the benefit of watching him die over and over in the movie, with some hilarious results a few times.
This is an interesting one for me, because I recognize all of what you are saying but cannot untangle the movie from my nostalgia for it. I watched this so much growing up that it took a while to realize nobody else’s parents had bought this movie and shouted “Give my regards to King Tut, asshole!” on a regular basis.
I do love a plot that partially hinges on linguistics, even if that slows the pace compared to my usual kind of popcorn scifi. I mean, once you know the vowels…
Wasn’t there a tor post some time ago about how a headcannon can fill in the holes to a bad or “okay” movie/show/book/comic and make it better? If so, then that’s the Stargate movie to me. I also watched it as a young teen in the 90s, when a good majority of scifi-action flicks were little better on the storytelling or diversity scale, let’s be honest. Or 90s action movies in general.
So yeah, I liked it. I own it. I watch it occassionally. I agree that Russell’s O’Neil was a complete waste and I honestly don’t know what he was going for there (we know he can do better). Spade was great. Davidson and Cruz were my favorites. Davidson wasn’t given much to do, but he definitely smoldered, so I was fine with that!
I also walked down the aisle to the theme, so ha ha ha. I will admit it was because of the TV show though. The movie theme just fit better for what we were going for.
Watched SG-1 as it came out and when I was very young. Looking forward to this re-read.
@34/Mirana: Filling in the holes in a bad movie to make it better is pretty much what the Stargate TV franchise spent a dozen years doing.
And while a good majority of films in any decade are poor to mediocre, I think you’re understating how many great SF films there were in the ’90s. That decade saw Back to the Future Part III, Gremlins II, Total Recall, The Rocketeer, Star Trek VI, Terminator 2, Ghost in the Shell, 12 Monkeys, Star Trek: First Contact, Gattaca, Men in Black, Dark City, The Truman Show, Galaxy Quest, The Iron Giant, and a little film called The Matrix. Sure, there were other films on Stargate‘s level, like Independence Day, Armageddon, The Fifth Element, and Starship Troopers (though few of them were as ploddingly dull), but it’s not as if the decade was some kind of cinematic wasteland.
Nostalgia bias is a fair charge to level at people who wouldn’t be as critical of the movie as the OP or some of the comments (and I would count myself as one of those). I’m with #19 here; additionally, if you look at the scenes back on Earth, the linguist and techs include females, it’s a diverse group there. Yes, in general, all the lead roles except for Sha’uri are male, and except for Ra, pale.
I also think the movie stands up well, in small part, because of how it spells things out (or, actually, doesn’t). Daniel comes to the project because, as Catherine points out, he doesn’t have any other options. We don’t get a long, dragged out hero’s expository origin. Likewise, with Jack, we don’t get all the endless details on his past, it’s a brief conversation between two soldiars once the audience has already been introduce to O’Neil. I’m also of the opinion, that even for older viewers today, so many films from the 70’s to the 80’s that are not dramas seem slow, or poorly paced, by comparison to what we (as an audience) have become inured to on tv and in films for action/adventure, etc., particularly in science fiction or fantasy films. Even something as overlong and glacial as the last Hobbit film has for more cuts, pans, disolves, additional camera views, etc., than anything on view here with Stargate.
My other comment here (as many of my views have already been expressed above by one or another post) – and, to be fair, this may say more about my knowledge of the author than anything else, but I felt that in parts (paragraphs 4, 7 and 8, just to name a few examples) do not really summarize or explicate the movie well, for someone who might not be familiar with it. While not precisely incorrect, in some respects the narrative is incomplete, in others it leaves an impression that could lead to an inaccurate view of the film by what is omitted, or by how the description is cast.
@37/fds: I have no problem with the pacing in older shows and movies as a rule. There are plenty that I’m still able to enjoy as much as I ever did. But I never enjoyed Stargate much even when it was new.
There’s no one-to-one relationship between a film’s pacing and it’s enjoyability. For instance, I happen to think Star Trek: The Motion Picture is less boringly paced than The Wrath of Khan. It’s slow and deliberate, but the things it lingers on are interesting to me. That’s the key. If the content is interesting, I welcome a deliberate, lingering pace that lets me savor it. But if it’s boring and superficial, then even a faster pace won’t make it all that interesting. Stargate is simply not an interesting movie. It has very few ideas, and the one really great idea it has — the Stargate itself — is totally squandered on warmed-over ancient-astronaut silliness.
I do remember when I first heard that they were making a series based on this film thinking “really?” but damn me if they didn’t knock it out of the park.
@39/phuzz: Though it took two or three seasons before the show really found its groove. But we’ll get to that.
I remember really wanting to see more of the symbols for the gate adresses and being slightly confused that they went from hieroglyphs to constillations but you know space. KRAD you’ve used the screen shot Shar’re from the tv show not the movie. I was a little confused when I saw it because I know it’s two different actresses.
I’m with #19 and #36 on the gender roles. Dr. Langford in particular was the sort of character I didn’t see much of in movies in those days: a competent, learned, admirable and personable old woman. Hell, I don’t see many characters like that in the movies *these* days! Especially when you factor in “old.” I keep a list of “old women in the movies I’d like to be like one day,” and it’s a pretty short list, though I have seen lots of movies. (Impressive old women whom you’d never want in your personal space do not count.)
– I liked this movie when I first saw it, but didn’t love it. I couldn’t understand why the film makers, with a whole universe of ideas to choose from, send the team to the desolate planet of the buffalo herders. Not the most compelling setting for adventure from my perspective. As has been stated above, however, the set up was perfect for an episodic TV series. In the TV series, though, the budget ended up limiting the diversity of the worlds they visited. If they do bring back new Stargate movies, hopefully they will use the budget and modern special effects to give us some more spectacular settings.
– Russell was directed to play a numb, traumatized person. Numb people are not fun to watch. So I don’t blame his portrayal, only the decision of the writers and directors to send the character in that direction. Another actor that got a lot of criticism for playing a role without much feeling was the guy who played Commander Sinclair on the first season of Babylon 5. We later learned that he was told to act numb and traumatized. If you want an adventure to be fun and compelling, why throw a wet blanket on your leads?
– Speaking of problematic gender roles, I am uncomfortable with the bad guy being the androgynous character. In fact, while I didn’t recognize it while I was young, I am constantly struck by how many male villians in old movies were given effeminate characteristics. The message, which I didn’t notice when I was younger, was that different equals evil.
– And another problematic message was superior Americans coming in and dealing with inferior natives. Humility is a virtue that this country too often ignores.
– But there were also many good points to the movie, and in the end it spawned a lot of good TV. So in the balance, it ended up being a success.
@43: I found it amusing how the TV series had Teal’c explain that the Goa’uld had terraformed most of the worlds in the Stargate network with the same type of organisms, explaining why so many of them looked like the forests around Vancouver. Although I guess in the context of later seasons, we’d have to conclude that it was the Ancients who did the terraforming, and the Goa’uld just stole the credit.
Whenever we stumble across Stargate (the movie) on cable, my wife and I will invariably watch it…up to the point that Jackson’s discovery allows them to send the MALP thru the gate. Then we’re done. But that first section of the movie is absolute gold.
The “constellations” thing makes no sense whatsoever, and the series explanation is little better. My personal headcanon is that every gate has its own equivalent of an IP address. And I agree that really, once they knew the first six symbols to use, they could have determined the seventh symbol simply by methodically trying every other symbol one by one.
I was skeptical when I heard they were making a series of the movie–but I quickly became a big fan. There is so much to like about it…at least in the early seasons. Later on, it became too “Trek-ified” for my tastes, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
MHam83 @27 & RobinM @41 – Keith has said he doesn’t insert the pictures, so we should be blaming TorChris for that one.
Patches @32 –
I read a discussion recently about Adam Baldwin and Jayne. Apparently there are a bunch of people out there who not only don’t like Baldwin’s politics, but who transfer it over to Jayne. I find this practice appalling, frankly, but it’s quite common – as the 100-post thread about it indicated. There were some digressions, but it was a very intense conversation.
Nice coincidence, I just watched this movie a few days ago for the first time in YEARS, mainly because we just got back from Universal Studios and my nostalgic desire for big movies with big scores is going full blast.
I was 13 when this movie came out, and I remember LOVING it (of course, I was in the prime target demographic). On this rewatch, however, it definitely wasn’t as shiny as I remember. Russell’s O’Neil is bland (they never really do anything with his trauma), it seems like the film touches on some really cool ideas but then moves on to the next thing without digging any deeper, and I actually HATED French Stewart’s character.
I think what the movie does have going for it is Spader, the linguistics, the visuals (I still get a thrill when the Stargate portal opens for the first time, and I think the spaceship settling on the pyramid and opening is still pretty sweet), and the music (I love the opening and closing themes).
I didn’t really watch the show that much except for a few episodes here and there, but I always wanted to, so I’m glad this rewatch is happening! Maybe I’ll finally get to see the potential from the film broadened and deepened. I’m excited, carry on!
I liked the movie (although that whole “galaxy on the other side of the universe” thing bugged the stuffing out of me), but never quite got into the TV series.
Really, the movie is pretty decent variation on the Rider Haggard/A. Merritt “lost race” story. They couldn’t jam a lost civilization into the heart of Africa or the Himalayas, so they had to put it on the other side of a dimensional portal.
@46 MeredithP
Yeah, I can understand people having difficulty serparating character from actor, particularly when that actor does such a good job inhabiting the role or is outwardly similar in personality, but I’ve found films and TV shows are more enjoyable when I know little to nothing about the actors (and little to nothing about the production as well). Never meet your heroes, they say, and for good reason.
I just watched this movie for the first time. Somehow I missed it in the 90s.
The version I rented from YouTube had a different title sequence. Instead of a spaceship landing on a pyramid, it showed a closeup of Ra’s head gear (seen hereL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsMTvBmVMlQ). Once the main credits were over, it cut to a shot of the car driving in Egpyt.
After watching this movie, though, I think I’ll set aside some time to watch the TV show for the first time. We’ll see how long that lasts, but I’m hopeful.
I loved this movie when it first came out. And it was really fun to see the series take the idea and run with it.
The worst part of the movie for me is when they get to other side of the stargate, and then treat Daniel like crap. He’s their only way home, on another planet, and they throw hist stuff around, treat him like high school jocks picking on the match club, etc. Wouldn’t they send the military elite like a Seal time to another planet? Not a bunch of whiney children? I cringe when this scene comes up and usually skip it.
I’ve got a special soft spot in my heart for this movie, as it was the first one I ever went to see on my own with my own hard-earned money as a fourteen year old. While I agree that it hasn’t aged well I still had enough fondness for it that I never really warmed up to the TV versions of the characters.
Something I haven’t seen anyone else mention is that there was a brief series of novels that acted as sequels to the movies long before SG-1 came out. I remember be amused at the alternate timeline but don’t remember much else about them other than Bast being the principle villain.
Seeing the reaction of people here who hated this movie and enjoyed the TV version has me temptedand it looks like it is covered under Amazon Prime so I think I will give it a shot.
I hated this movie when it first came out. It did not help that when I started college the next year my roomate loved it and watched it frequently. When the show aired I figured you had to at least have some regard for the movie to enjoy the show so I avoided it.
I seem to be in a minority when it comes to James Spader; his characters always seem to creep me out for some reason….like I would not be surprised if any of his characters had a freezer full of puppies at home.
@53/TribblesandBits: I think most of James Spader’s roles are creepy on purpose. Daniel Jackson is probably the most benevolent character I’ve seen him play. I mean, this is the guy who’s playing Ultron in the upcoming Avengers movie.
#45/47/and CLB, I have to say that I guess part of my nostalgia bias for the film is that I did enjoy it when I was younger, but as with 45, I do typically skip the end when I rewatch, and the earlier stuff, I really enjoy – when the series went into that stuff (the archeology and techinical stuff regarding actual worm hole travel), it was really gold for me.
In my case, when I watch ST:TMP, it’s just way to slow for me. I only watched it once when it came out, with a bunch of guys my own age, and we all enjoyed. When I decided to rewatch all the films, in order, I saw one of the enhanced DVD releases (it’s what my friend own, I was housesitting at his place for two weeks, thus the rewatch), and it was something I could have cooked and only paid partial attention to for much of the time, which is what I believed I actually did. ST:WOK, not so much in that regard. Other action films from the late 80s, early 90s (things like Time Cop, for example, are simply conceptually unwatchable for me), so the fact that I can catch a good 30% of this on Netflix as recently as last fall makes it a different thing altogether for me.
On the issue of the development of the people, I believe that’s well established in that Ra wanted those natives held back, due to the overthrow and push back on Earth, and another good aspect, gender wise, of the film (contrary to simply look at her as a sex object for Jackson or her father, or as someone to objectify for a primarily made audience) but the fact that – in spite of the prohibitions felt by her fellow villagers and those created by Ra and his henchman, she taught herself the language, taught the spoken version of it to Jackson, thus providing the means for ‘our heroes’ to return to Earth; it’s a pretty heroic role for a female for that time period of mainstream/big budget action or adventure films.
@55/FDS: Again, my issue with Sha’uri is not that she lacked a role in the film, it’s that her marriage with Jackson didn’t seem to be based on a real relationship. She just ended up with him because it was obligatory for the female lead to end up with the male romantic lead, and the fact that she was literally given to him in-story just reinforces the arbitrariness of it. She had agency as far as the language and the rebellion and such went, but she wasn’t given any emotional agency in the relationship. I didn’t believe in Daniel’s decision to stay and marry her, because there wasn’t a sufficient basis established for it. It didn’t feel romantic, just mechanical. He was given a wife and he took her, and that was the extent of it.
I believed in Daniel’s decision to stay, if only because the movie did a pretty good job of showing that Daniel’s life on Earth wasn’t exactly worth rushing back to. But yeah, his romantic relationship with Sha’uri or Sha’re or what-the-heck-ever was tiresomely perfunctory, though that was in keeping with the rest of the film, sadly.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@Keith: Just as a random thought, a rating system of “X out of 7 chevrons” to keep in tune with the ST rewatches?
I really hope that’s a joke.
I liked the show explanation of the glyphs when O’Neill “learned” ancient:
They were actually syllables forming the planet’s name: Pak-La-Rush The-O-Nas (sp?). So you spell the planet, you know the origin and you go there. I like this so much better than the computer generated numbers. I feel they should have explored this further once a lot more people spoke ancient.
As for James Spader being creepy on purpose – sex, lies, and videotape definitely was. Secretary kind of was. “Boston Legal” I think was supposed to be too, no? He totally embraces the creepy roles.
I feel that there are a lot of questions with the Stargate address system. @3, I like the idea that these were Ancient symbols interpreted as constellations, because as you say, a constellation isn’t a “point”, and also it would explain why no one at all before Jackson (given that the show establishes that astrophysicists like Carter were working on the project for two years) figured out they were constellations–it’s because it’s actually a stretch. But then again, they recognize them as symbols on the gate, and as someone pointed out, why not try all 39 symbols in turn–except there are 9 chevrons, so maybe they were thinking they would really need to choose from 59, 319 permutations if they thought the symbols could be repeated, or 32, 736 if they suspected that the symbols were all non-repeating. In any case, it seems that Jackson’s contribution was really just interpreting the point of origin correctly.
But it still begs the question of whether there is an established 3D coordinate system mapped to the galaxy by the stargates or not. I.e., if the location of one of the gate symbols is a single point in space, is this point assigned a value according to some coordinate system? If so, you only need three coordinate values (x-y-z) to establish a location, not six. Or if there’s not coordinate system assigned, and the locations corresponding to the symbols are somehow known via a subspace link, Jackson’s description of mapping the planet addresses severly limits the potential locations of stargates. Pick two of the 39 points (or 38, given one of the symbols is the point of origin) and make a line segment between them. Great. Pick two more points and do likewise, great…except that this line segment must needs intersect with the first one. If the points corresponding to the symbols can be anywhere in 3D space, it seems as though there are a severely limited number of pairs to be chosen that creates a line segment intersecting with the first one, given that we only have 36 left to choose from. In fact, if Jackson’s drawing and explanation are correct, then the order of the symbols in each pair doesn’t matter. So even if all remaining pairs could pontentially make a line segment that intersects with the first line segment, we get 442, 890 combinations for planets for the first four points, which still may seem like a lot, but it’s a lot less than 1,771,560 permutations of four symbols from 38 where order does matter. And again, that’s assuming that every single remaining pair of discrete fixed points can make a line in 3D space that intersects any given line from two previously chosen points. If these points are arrayed throughout the galaxy in three dimensions, I can only assume that there are going to be pairs of points for which this is not true.
Which raises another point…we still only need these four points to establish a stargate location at this point. Any third pair of points must have a line that intersects the other two at the same point where the other two already intersect. There is one, and only one, place where this can happen, so the last two symbols are redundant.
In my head canon, Carter has told Daniel that his idea of how the stargates work is basically crap, and that the actual system is something much more complicated. As @60 points out, we learn in “Lost City” that the symbols have a pronunciation to them, and that the names of the planets (which are meaningful as words in the Ancient language) can also stand for the stargate address. So maybe there’s a more compex system in place here. But there’s the fact that the symbols can’t repeat, so that kind of reinforces the symbol-as-fixed-point theory.
And then there’s the point of origin…so the gate with a particular point of origin symbol knows the 6-symbol address of this point of origin and assigns it to a single symbol on the gate, so why does it need the user to input it at all? Why doesn’t the DHD just do it?
I think I’ll call it quits here. I’m sure CLB will be able to point out any errors I’ve made; I would welcome the corrections if they are to be had.
Oh, to answer my question about the point-of-origin, we learn that the other two chevrons can be used, so maybe it’s more like an “enter” kind of thing…except that the DHD has that in the form of the big red button, so it’s still unnecessary.
@crzydroid: Yeah, I seem to recall thinking that the point-of-origin symbol is redundant. How does the gate not know its own address?
To define the location of a point on a planet in the galaxy you need a starting location, a start time, and a vector that encompasses movement of the planet around the star and the star around the galaxy. No way you’re doing that with 6 or 7 symbols. It’s gotta be something like an ip address.
Also remember that gates can be moved seemingly trivially; they seem to be “plug-and-play,” which suggests that the actual “drivers” are aboard the DHD (which also immediately provides the point-of-origin, as Carter observes during the series –the one symbol that doesn’t match any other gate).
It also seems that the Abydos DHD was hidden somewhere and Daniel only found it after Jack’s team had left –if it had been in the gateroom, this whole mess could’ve been avoided.
Though, since the Ancients originally came from Earth, it does make a sort of sense that they would have a coordinate system based on Earth constellations (though I’d expect them to be obscured by stellar drift, given the time frames at play). It’s possible that both theories are right.
@66: But as CLB pointed out, the stars in constellations are light years apart. They only appear to be clustered from our perspective. So even if the gate system is based on Earth constellations, it still doesn’t explain where the “point” is for the symbols.
@65: I would imagine stuff like that is handled automatically by the gate/DHD computer. There is perhaps some searching algorithm that attempts to make a connection to the gate and the address is only a ballpark figure. Heck, we’ve even seen that the gate has safety protocols in place to prevent connections if the wormhole would travel through a sun, so it must be figuring out some of that stuff. The user doesn’t necessarily need to input it though. It comes up as being pertinent to the SGC sometimes, since Carter (and others, I’m assuming) had to create their own dialing program for want of a DHD.
I was toying with the idea that maybe the 38 non-POO symbols represent 38-base numerical keys, so the user doesn’t have to dial 12 numbers, but then that doesn’t explain why the symbols can’t repeat.
@54 & 61: WRT James Spader: I’ll chalk this up to being my own personal taste…I just have not enjoyed any of his roles that I’ve seen. I have not seen Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Secratary, or any of Boston Legal. He just always seems to have the creep factor cranked to 11, even in Pretty in Pink and Stargate. I get that he was creepy on purpose in Wolf. I started dodging him after Supernova but I did stick it out through his season on The Office.
I did start into SG-1 on Amazon Prime and it does seem to be as advertised (hooray for Michael Shanks). It is a bit uneven, but nothing unforgivable for the first season of a show. It also seems to self-correct on the things that bug me so far. I would say that The Nox is point where I committed to binge watching in installements.
I’m really looking forward to the Wayward home for out-of-work genre actors section. So many familiar faces from the 90s. Stargate now resides in the same universe as Highlander in my own head. I am pretty sure Maj Samuels lost a few fights with Duncan McCleod and that is why he has not appeared again after the pilot.
Actually we saw Samuels a few times after the pilot. Eventually, though, he was replaced by Colin Cunningham’s Major Davies.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
crzydroid’s mention in @67 of the DHD made me realize that I am going to get even more confused as I rewatch Farscape and read this rewatch at the same time. I already call the DRDs “DHDs” by mistake, now I’m going to be utterly lost. *laughs*
@70: Just wait until we get to seasons 9 and 10, or “Farscape: SG-1.”
@69 Gotcha, have not gotten that far yet. Unless he dies onscreen I know how I will explain his eventual disappearance :).
Hey folks, due to deadlines and insanity, I’m not going to have the SG-1 season 1 article up in time for tomorrow. So next week, you’ll get a “three-watch” — Monday will be SG-1 season 1, the TOS Rewatch of “The Enemy Within” will be pushed to Wednesday, and we’ll have SG-1 season 2 on Friday. Cha cha cha.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@TribblesandBits:
Stargate gets really, really good for about 4 years, then not so good.. then Season 8 ends incredibly well… And then you basically have two seasons of a loosely related show by the same name with a few of the same characters.
I view seasons 9-10 as just as much of a spin off as Atlantis is. This way my headcanon can be that Reckoning / Threads / Moebius is one of the greatest endings to a show ever.
The fact that the last scene of Moebius isn’t how the series actually ends really, really pisses me off when I let myself think about it. So I don’t.
Welcome to the existential nightmare that is known to most as
STARGATE. Stargate was a PG-13 sci-fi epic that was released in the
summer of 1994 to lack-luster reviews, but some popular acclaim. The
many critics that panned this film concentrated on what they believed
were plotholes and sub-standard creative abilities on the part of the
script. Stargate, they belived, was a badly written story, and with
their strict time restraints in viewing new releases, the critics
were
forced(?) to move on to the next lemon without giving Stargate a more
careful look. The general audience did more or less the same. That
had
turned out to be an earth-shattering mistake.
The official synopsis is as follows: A discredited Egyptologist,
Daniel Jackson (played by James Spader), decyphers the function of an
ancient mechanical portal, long buried in the sands of Giza. Upon
which, the air force dispatches a team of “military specialists” to
utilize the portal to transport themselves halfway across the
universe
to a desert planet inhabited by north africans, “enslaved” to labor
in
quartz mines by an astounding being identified as the Egyptian god,
Ra. In the coarse of events, the specialists do battle with the sun
god, “liberate” the down-trodden inhabitants from forced servitude,
and rescue the earth from total inihilation at the hands of Ra.
An erroneous social and political context was applied by the
audience when they had viewed this film and certain salient details
about the characters, their behavior, and their motivations have all
been left unsaid…or even unnoticed. The erroneous context applied
was simply that this is just a “movie”. Stargate is not just a
science
fiction film. I would be more accurrate if I were to refer to it as a
parable about a particular event….our present situation in Iraq,
how
we came to be involved there, and the moral, ethical, and psychiatric
disposition of the people who got us there.
The movie STARGATE never made any sense as a science fiction tale,
but as a primer of ideological aggression of the reactionary
persuasion, it is nothing less than an emotional template of what may
be going on in the heads of the Bush Crime Cartel and their
immeadiate
adherents in the right wing. Certain details may not match up, but,
as
we all have seen, the results are generally the same.
It is with this that I find Stargate so facinating. There were many
films that tout, explicitly or implicitly, sociopathic erges and
bias,
but I believe that STARGATE is the first film that is so totally
self-
aware and accepting of its anti-humanist leanings, that for reasons
only known to themselves, the producers allowed, in the script,
subtle
hints and clues that the sun god RA is actually little more than the
victim of Colonel O’Niel’s military aggression, and it is the Colonel
himself who is more worthy of being designated the “villian”. These
so-
called clues are definite and unshakable, once they are percieved.
Unfortunately, “perception”, as in the case of watching this film,
is a matter of political outlook. Far too many people watched this
film and could not see below its glossy, symbolistic superficiality.
Noone was watching too closely, or listening too carefully.
The “facts” are as follows:
Colonel Jack O’Niel, a deranged and suicidal individual, was given
charge of an atomic weapon, presummedly under circumstances that
would
preclude a sane and well-adjusted man.
O’Niel secretly transport the weapon, unbeknownst to his
subordinates in his recon team. The Japanese would refer to this
policy as “kamakaze”. A recon team without a nuke would be considered
“expendable”. A recon team WITH a nuke would be considered already
“expended”.
You know, if a squad of american soldiers were to travel billions
of
light-years through a stargate, only to arrive on a planet inhabited
by harmless, pre-industrial north africans, you would think that
relations with these people would go with little trouble….instead
of:
In the very first instant upon meeting the africans, O’Niel drew
his
weapon and brandished under the nose of a frightened teen-ager. The
boy screamed and fled. Noone else in O’Niel’s team saw it fit to draw
their own weapons.
Later, and with the very same boy, O’Niel again found it neccessary
to menace the boy again with an automatic weapon. The child, merely
curious, had attempted to pick up the weapon to examine it. He
screamed and fled again after O’Niel’s second assault.
And later still, when O’Niel and his men were, in every respect,
“legally” apprehended by Ra’s guards and brought to the throne room
to
answer for, among other things, the presence of an atomic bomb among
their personal effects, O’Niel’s only response was to physically
attack everyone in the throne room. All this, within close proximity
of a dozen young children, mostly pre-teen. And at the climax of this
scuffle, O’Niel trained his weapon at these same children, struggling
with the idea of killing them in order to get at a seated and unarmed
Ra. At the instant that O’Niel was struck down from behind, it was
clear enough that he was losing his “struggle” and was about to pull
the trigger.
With a movie audience that’s an expert at drawing moral conclusions
based on a quick sketch of moral character in action, how could so
many have accepted what has taken place in that room to the point
that
they ignored all the subsequent war crimes accumilated by O’Niel by
the end of the movie? They were numerous:
Needless to say, according to continuity, those same schoolchildren
were still in the pyramid when it was destroyed by O’Niel and
Jackson.
Prior to that, O’Niel led a battillion of heavily armed teenagers
on
a frontal assault against Ra’s pyramid fortress( All individuals
deemed “teenagers”, are, in my estimation, well below 18 years in
age.). A situation made worse as they took on heavy casualties. If
the
boys had decided to do this on their own, it’s a tragedy of it’s own
making, but they were, apparently, illegally conscripted by O’Niel
for
combat they weren’t trained to win, in a situation instigated solely
by O’Niel.
during the same firefight, according to editing, it appeared as
though Jackson accidentally shot one of his own boys…he squeezed
off
a couple of shots backwards over his shoulder without aiming, looking
in another direction.
Prior to that, O’Niel captured one of Ra’s guards, an individual
barely out of his teens, himself. This person, who surrendered
without resistence, was executed with his own weapon by O’Niel,
solely
to prove to the north africans that the guard was a mortal, like
themselves.
Prior to that, while hiding in a cave, O’Niel had made the partial
admission that his case was less than defensible, but now “that Ra
has
the bomb”, something must be done. Considering that “the bomb” was
actually the weapon that O’Niel secretly brought with him from earth
in the first place, that kind of circular logic to justify an action
movie maybe a disturbing indicator.
And prior to that, During the one verbal confrontation with Ra, The
sun god essentially made a rational ultimatum of exchanging the life
of O’Niel for the lives of “all who knew” Jackson…implicating the
planet earth. By this time, O’Niel was so criminally culpable, that
the choice was perfectly easy to make. Needless to say Jackson didn’t
make that choice. To be fair, the dialogue did not make that point
explicitly clear, but that was the underlining jist of what Ra meant.
And although one may resent being dictated terms to by an enemy in a
position of power, You must remember, Ra didn’t CHOOSE to be the
enemy. It is the most disturbing moral aspect of this movie.
However, on the other hand, the conversation could also be
interpreted as your run-of-the-mill “Ming the Merciless” tirade,
threatening the earth and it’s inhabitants if Jackson didn’t comply
with his demands.
The grammer and syntax of the verbal exchange was so precisely
ambiguous, that it was possible for even the most discerning observer
to derive two different meanings from Ra’s statements. The verbal
acrobatics of this dialogue seems to indicate to me that the
producers
were well aware of the moral and ethical ambiguity, but sought to
lean
the movie audience toward the reactionary side by using certain
stereotypical cues and signs, like menacing mood music and indicative
posturing, to “demonize” Ra’s character before the audience. For
example, when I first saw Stargate, I thought Ra was the “heavy”,
solely because of the way he walks about the throneroom; sexually
suggestive, stalking like a cat almost, with a soundtrack that’s just
as feline as he is. I knew that no good could come from such a
person…..and he hasn’t even spoken his first lines yet. Somehow,
“content of character”, the exact criteria in judging “good” from
“evil”, was completely absent from these procedings.
When one produces a “good vs evil” action film, but shows a certain
disinterest in the core meaning of what “good” and “evil” stands for,
then it stands to reason that this character flaw will somehow
translate itself into the screenplay….as it did here.
But we needn’t fuck around with such hub-bubbery as this. The film,
STARGATE, is obviously politically driven. Do I have a problem with
it? I sure do, but it’s not the main thing. The main thing is that so
few people percieved the true motivations of this greek tragedy, that
if anything like this were to take place in real life, at the expense
of american taxdollars, would there be enough people to garner
political support to put a stop to it?
Tragically, in our particularly sad case, the answer is no.
Necroing from the dead!
I also think the beginning, pre trip, is awesome and it goes downhill once they cross the gate, but because most of the ideas are in that part, and the b movie tropes on the second (the romantic interest, the ewoks, etc) and everything looks way more sparse. From a moody opening with mysterious old woman, faster than light exposition and good illumination of urban and sci fi spaces, we go into a boring desert. I expected more of the palace, more of the city, more an ambiguous evil them that is protected by children (that image is even creepier now) because they give them something in return, more running through markets, and not that weird tone and narrative blabbering that includes flawed tragedy with a war helmet rolling down the stairs referencing who knows what of the thousand films that have done that shot before (I say Aldrich’s “Attack!” but you never know with Emmerich)
Not to say that I expected more interstellar trips.
Anyway, the series fixed that.