Stargate SG-1 Minicaps / Season 1, Eps. 19-21 and Season One Overview

The Stargate SG-1 Season One Minicaps is going out on a cliffhanger. Deal with it.

Stewart here…

We’ve been spending this first season with SG-1 fighting Apophis’ forces, discovering (and occasionally alienating) new civilizations, but still not closer to finding or curing Sha’re or Skarra. Well, we’ll get one step closer in this round of minicaps, so let’s jump into it…

“There But For The Grace of God”

On a deserted planet, Daniel finds an alien mirror that seems to be innocuous…until he discovers that Stargate Command has no idea who he is! It seems the mirror has put him into a parallel universe where SG-1 has existed without him, O’Neill is a general, Carter’s a doctor, and Teal’c…well he’s helping lead a Goa’uld invasion force on Earth! And from what we see, Earth is not on the winning side of this fight. So Daniel has to get back to his reality, while discovering a rather crucial piece of information for the remainder of the season.

“Grenades for everyone!”

–A nice note in Dr. Langford is really the head scientist of the Stargate program, and this parallel reality’s Daniel Jackson (who was quite rude to Catherine when being asked to join up and refusing to) is probably dead in the early days of the invasion.

–How bad things are in this parallel reality: a billion people are dead on Earth thanks to the Goa’uld invasion, people are being sent through the gate to a safe planet, and once O’Neill gets coordinates that Daniel provides offhand to Chulak, he sends a large nuke through to annihilate the planet. Yikes.

–Long haired Sam Carter. Mrowrrr. And she’s engaged to O’Neill? Surprising!

–“I also wish to blow you all to hell.”

–“You’ll be wondering how I know your name.”

“Politics”

The team is barely having a chance to discuss Daniel’s warning from that other reality, when they get a new problem at home to contend with. A blustery senator is making an inquiry into the viability of the Stargate program (hey, like most government projects, it costs mucho bucks), and talks to the team. But it’s clear early on how one-sided this whole thing is against them, and as can be expected, the program is shut down. As much as there a flashbacks to events of the season, this is still far more episode than clip show thanks to the stakes raised in it.

Carter: “Well, it could be worse, guys.”

–Smart move to cast Ronny Cox as the adversarial (and clearly deluded to human superiority against a race that has mastered intergalactic travel) Senator Kinsey. Good or bad, it’s not the last we’ll see of him in this show.

–Samuels is back! Who? Exactly!

–Daniel makes a reference to Independence Day with that sarcastic computer virus idea.

–Really, not much to talk about in what is essentially a clip show, except they do bother to check on planets they’ve visited, so that’s reassuring.

–O’Neill’s solution to the program’s budget problems: “How about a bake sale? Yard sale? Car wash?”

“Within The Serpent’s Grasp”

The first season ends with SG-1 deciding to go against orders to stand down and dial up Daniel’s mystery coordinates. Where they end up is a Goa’uld spaceship, part of an invasion fleet on its way to Earth. The Goa’uld controlled Skarra is there, and O’Neill tries to bring back his surrogate kid, only to have to kill him. And that invasion force is about to launch its first assault on Earth as we wait to see how all of this will turn out in season two.

O’Neill: “You were saying how things could be worse, Carter?” Carter: “Yeah, my bad, everyone.”

–Feretti from the pilot (and technically the movie) is back, in charge of his own SG unit, and ready to help his former commander out. Sorry, but it looks like he’ll be stuck along with the other volunteers from the SG teams on Earth.

–You know, the “zat” guns they find might be a little more efficient if you could adjust the settings yourself, rather than going from stunning in the first shot, maybe killing in the second, and likely disintegrating in the third. Just saying.

–No no, Teal’c, its “surgical attack”, not “medical attack”.

–A nice little joke from O’Neill about whether the orb transmitter gets Showtime, which was the show’s home at the time.

–Daniel’s response to hearing they can only get back home by sending the ship back from where it came: “Right, I’ll just go tell the pilot.”

And that’s it for the season one minicaps of Stargate SG-1, but before we leave, here’s some highlights of the season:

–BEST EPISODES: “Children of the Gods”, “The Broca Divide”, “Thor’s Hammer”, “Within The Serpent’s Grasp”

–WORST EPISODES: “Emancipation”, “Enigma”

–THINGS WE LEARNED THIS SEASON: Try to avoid sleeping with the indigenous life on a planet for at least a day, be wary of diseases, and be sure you are not a robot doppelgänger of yourself.

–SAMANTHA CARTER BOYFRIEND COUNTER: One crazed ex (killed in a Stargate), and a potential alien boyfriend who’s hanging with the Nox now.

–TEAL’C’S ‘INDEED’ COUNTER: Zero. This should improve shortly.

–PREDICTIONS FOR SEASON TWO: Teal’c, where’s that line I like? Get to that.

–SEASON ONE ANALYSIS: It’s been quite a while since I sat down and watched a full season of SG-1 (one of the advantages of picking the good episodes in 200 plus of them), and for an inaugural season of a show that I knew would get more complicated and dense, I have to say I quite enjoyed the first season. There’s a good amount of cheese in-between the good stuff (should I mention The Nox again?), but when this show is working, it’s some great adventure oriented Sci-Fi television. And the core team is solid, making it a combination that was difficult to replicate successfully in other Stargate-related shows and in SG-1(let alone when one character left for a period of time). That I wanted to jump immediately into the next season after the first season’s thrilling cliffhanger is a testament to the cast and crew of Stargate SG-1 to make something thrilling to watch.

That said, we did get a lot of open ends left with the still missing Sha’re and what will happen now the Goa’uld invasion ships are in spitting distance of Earth and SG-1 is stuck to watch what happens next. Well, the former point will be answered eventually, but the latter’s solution will kick off a equally fun second season.

“Minions! When I call back, you have better installed my home entertainment center! NO MORE DELAYS!”

NEXT TIME: Season two of the Stargate SG-1 minicaps kicks off with the team launching a suicide mission to destroy the Goa’uld invasion ships in “The Serpent’s Lair”, Carter gets possessed by a Goa’uld with questionable loyalties in “In The Line of Duty”, SG-1 has to escape an alien penal colony in “Prisoners”, and the team is trapped in their darkest memories in “The Gamekeeper”.