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[Harlock]

Only now I watched almost all the seasons of Stargate SG-1. I remember trying to watch a couple of years ago but dont liked the first episode. Give another try and loved it.

Why is the story is good:
- SG1 has a little of 80s mixed with 90s style. It is naive, with simple plot solutions, but without being silly or dumb.
- The overall universe is very consistent. In Star Trek universe you have all that human like aliens and civilizations without a good reason. In Stargate almost everything is well explain and made sense.
- The main enemy, the Ghouls, are like space medieval lords fighting amongst themselves. This help to justify why they are so limited and human can fight back.
- Talking about humans, is very cool to see how earth is getting better technology along the seasons. They are clueless in the first episode and have spaceships by the middle of series.
- Most episodes are self-contained, but advance the overall story. Even episodes you think dont have any implications, later in the series become important.
- The writing is funny is self-aware.

Why is the characters are good:
- Since TNG I dont see a serie with so well resolved characters.
- The 4 main actors feels right. Perhaps Michael Shanks is a little off as Daniel Jackson. The 1994 movie actor was better.
- Christopher Judge look serious but you can see he is always smiling playing Teal'c.
- Samantha Carter is the best woman character in any tv series. Amanda Tapping was always wearing a military uniform and looked beautiful and smart anyway all the time.
- And we get Richard Dean Anderson. In the first episodes I could not look at him and think "fuck, it is the MAcGyver". But time go and he becomes 100% Jack O'Neill. Very funny character. The self-aware humor could be horrible in the wrong actor, but he delivered. They seems to having a good time while filming SG1.

 

[Keyser Soze]

SG1 is great, once you get passed the horrible start and bypass the horrible ending.

Atlantis has some great one off episodes as well too - although I disliked most of the main arcs of that show

Universe ended too early - it was just getting great after a VERY shaky first season :/

 

[Skyzard]

Really fantastic show except for just a few episodes [

Spoiler

when the guy gets stuck down below in some water tank is the main one I remember

. The others being re-cappers instead of more goodness]. And don't watch the later movies, main guy got old/fat for the part.

I liked it better than Star Trek, which just seemed a tad too out dated for me in comparison but I never watched in one after the other like I did with Stargate.

 

[Keyser Soze]

Damian Kindler went onto do Sanctuary with Amanda Tapping after his work on SG1 .Sanctuary is a good show to move onto when done with Stargate.

If you start looking at the credits (season 6 onwards), you probably notice Kindler wrote a few of your fave episodes...

 

[Tacitus_]

Goa'uld, not ghouls!

 

[Skyzard]

Damian Kindler went onto do Sanctuary with Amanda Tapping after his work on SG1 .Sanctuary is a good show to move onto when done with Stargate.

If you start looking at the credits (season 6 onwards), you probably notice Kindler wrote a few of your fave episodes...

Damn, thanks for the info, I'll check it out. Was pretty desperate at the time for a replacement and never got it. Oh, I finally caught up what Firefly was...and then that was over. Might check out farscape if Sanctuary isn't my thing, thanks though.

 

[Succinct Verbosity]

I love Stargate, but I feel like Star Trek's highs were greater than what Stargate accomplished. I mean, yeah, Voyager destroyed the Borg... But most of the federations enemies felt threatining from start to finish. Stargate's antagonists were terrible.

 

[Purkake4]

SG1 is great, once you get passed the horrible start and bypass the horrible ending.

Surely you mean the best ending?

Spoiler

Or at least last episode

 

[Keyser Soze]

Surely you mean the best ending?

The last two seasons (with the Ori) were kinda horrible for me. Ben Browder and Claudia Black are great fun actors (but some of those episodes are pretty fricken bad). As usual with the show, there is a bunch of great one off episodes in the two seasons, but I feel the whole Ori arc is a pretty hard watch.

Season 8 was the perfect end off for me, fantasticc stuff

 

[Marty Chinn]

SG1 is great, once you get passed the horrible start and bypass the horrible ending.

Atlantis has some great one off episodes as well too - although I disliked most of the main arcs of that show

Universe ended too early - it was just getting great after a VERY shaky first season :/

Yes this. It takes like 12 to 14 eps before it starts to become interesting. That and I'm glad they rebooted Samantha Carter. She was so irritating in the beginning and it's almost like they hit the reset button with her and changed her character for the better.

 

[Team Filler]

Even though post S8 of SG-1 was lacking in parts, I'm still glad we got it and thus got more Vala Maldoran.

 

[Davey Cakes]

I'm currently in Season 3 of SG-1.

I enjoy the show but it hasn't grabbed me like Star Trek: TNG or DS9 did. The storylines are not always interesting. The planets they go to are boring (hey look, another bland forest!). Plus the whole military theme which is more traditional (as opposed to Star Trek's idea of military) isn't always my thing.

Maybe it's because the show is a sci-fi adventure show and there's more adventure than pure sci-fi. Then again there isn't as much of the philosophical stuff as the Trek series I've seen either, though it's there in places.

In general I figured I'd feel this way about SG-1. Maybe it's confirmation bias? All I know is that I've been running through sci-fi adventure shows for a while and the ones I've completed thus far (such as TNG, DS9, Babylon 5, Farscape, BSG, Firefly) have been more intriguing and fun to watch. Then again, these shows are "space sci-fi" or "space operas" where SG-1 isn't necessarily going for the same thing, even if it involves traveling to other planets.

 

[Purkake4]

The last two seasons (with the Ori) were kinda horrible for me. Ben Browder and Claudia Black are great fun actors (but some of those episodes are pretty fricken bad). As usual with the show, there is a bunch of great one off episodes in the two seasons, but I feel the whole Ori arc is a pretty hard watch.

Season 8 was the perfect end off for me, fantasticc stuff

I don't really disagree. The last episode was spot on though, not too many series get a chance for a nice finale.

Spoiler

Those Ba'al episodes though...

 

[Keyser Soze]

Damn, thanks for the info, I'll check it out. Was pretty desperate at the time for a replacement and never got it. Oh, I finally caught up what Firefly was...and then that was over. Might check out farscape if Sanctuary isn't my thing, thanks though.

The one thing that might annoy you with Sanctuary it that it is much more supernatural fantasy than sci-fi. I am put off by supernatural stuff myself these days (as there is a hell of a lot of bad stuff in the genre on TV), but I feel this show did it well.

Another problem you might have with the show, is that it uses a good bit of green screen filming as they did not a have a huge budget to go on location, but there is some good stories told to make you forget about this.

 

[Gallbaro]

The last two seasons (with the Ori) were kinda horrible for me. Ben Browder and Claudia Black are great fun actors (but some of those episodes are pretty fricken bad). As usual with the show, there is a bunch of great one off episodes in the two seasons, but I feel the whole Ori arc is a pretty hard watch.

Season 8 was the perfect end off for me, fantasticc stuff

Episode 200 was awesome though.

and

Furlings

 

[MMaRsu]

I doubt its better than DS9

 

[Mesoian]

Episode 200 was awesome though.

and

Furlings

UGH SO GOOD!

I don't know if SG1 beats Next Generation, but it sure as hell kicks the crap out of every other star trek series in existance. It's a fantastic show that probably went on a little longer than it should have.

 

[Marty Chinn]

I doubt its better than DS9

I think it's more consistent than DS9. It certainly doesn't make you wait until Season 4 before it gets good as well.

 

[Gallbaro]

I doubt its better than DS9

Not to start a debate, but I watched Stargate after watching star trek, I only felt DS9 really grabbed me for the last 2 seasons, with the last few episodes (except the last one) being the high points.

Stargate is 6 or so fantastic seasons with good shows scattered in the remainder.

 

[googleplex]

Stargate Universe deserved more seasons.

 

[Dragonborn]

Yup I love Stargate. Recently rematches SG1 again, I'll probably rematch Atlantis again soon. And yup, I also really enjoyed Universe.w hat I wouldn't give for another season... Or more.

 

[Gallbaro]

Stargate Universe deserved more seasons.

SGU had just hit is role as "Serious Stargate meets BSG."

 

[Keyser Soze]

I doubt its better than DS9

I'd say both shows ended about equal in terms of quality

DS9 has a similar rough start too. Nana Visitor did the world's worst acting job portraying Kira in season 1, but really pulled through as the show went on. DS9 probably had a worse start than SG1 over - but both shows went onto great things.

DS9 did not have a Hathor though. That episode needs to be set on fire.

 

[Drazgul]

SG-1 is great, but Babylon 5 is divine.

 

[Complistic]

I really owe it to myself to watch the show again. I havent seen it since each episode originally aired.

 

[Keyser Soze]

SG-1 is great, but Babylon 5 is divine.

Speaking of horrible Season 1 shows....

Ughhhhh

 

[Drazgul]

Speaking of horrible Season 1 shows....

Ughhhhh

Whatevs, TNG S1 was still worse.

 

[Dragonborn]

SG-1 is great, but Babylon 5 is divine.

I've wanted to watch Babylon 5 but man it hasn't aged well

 

[Hiltz]

It's been said that Richard Dean Anderson did not want Jack O' Neill to be portrayed in the same way as when Kurt Russel played the original version of the character in the first Star Gate film. Anderson didn't want his version of the character to be as serious, and wanted to have opportunities for comedic leeway as well.

Anyway, I was a fan of SG-1, but never could get into Star Trek. It just seemed boring, slower-paced and uneventful to watch whenever I happened to catch it on TV on occasion.

 

[DrSlek]

I think we can all agree that Window of Opportunity is the best episode of the best Sci-Fi series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMBNJ1A_CjI

 

[Tevious]

I'm watching it again for the second time and currently am at Season 6. Even though I love the show, I got to say I disagree with a lot that you said. Many of the plots are certainly silly and dumb. The show often feels like it was written by Saturday Morning Cartoon writers. The whole mechanics behind how the Goa'ulds work when they take a host is one of the most ridiculous things I've seen on TV; the glowing eyes and changing of voice and how something that big can just penetrate through the neck and take over the body and mind and it can even heal it's host. The whole idea behind the Jaffa is pretty stupid too. Why would the Goa'uld keep their young in the bellies of their soldiers that they often treat as canon fodder?

In Star Trek universe you have all that human like aliens and civilizations without a good reason. In Stargate almost everything is well explain and made sense.

In Star Trek, there is an episode that explains that an alien humanoid race planted life on many planets throughout the galaxy to eventually evolve into their image. In Stargate, there are humans throughout the galaxy because they all originated from Earth. Both had budgets and constraints to deal with and have their own reasons for having human looking people throughout the galaxy.

Although, what Stargate doesn't explain is how everyone can speak English. And even in the last episode I was watching (S6E07 "Shadowplay"), I couldn't help but chuckle at what the professor was wearing on Jonas' planet. That somehow, despite being separated by thousands of years, both the people on Earth and Jonas' planet would develop a suit and tie as men's apparel. You know, even when Star Trek is at it's laziest and doesn't put any makeup on an alien race, they at least dress them differently and try to make them seem like a different culture.

- Samantha Carter is the best woman character in any tv series. Amanda Tapping was always wearing a military uniform and looked beautiful and smart anyway all the time.

Ugh... I don't mind her so much as a character, but I really don't see how she is so "beautiful". The show really goes out of its way to point this out many times with several male characters drooling over her. I'm convinced the writers all had a big hard on for her. She's a bit too butch for my tastes. And it really bothered me that in Stargate Atlantis they

Spoiler

ditched Torri Higginson for Amanda Tapping

. Dr. Weir was miles better of a character than Carter.

That said, its a fun show if you don't take any of it seriously and don't think too much. But as someone else already said, Star Trek accomplished much more than what Stargate has.

 

[Kimaka]

I just finished season 10 of SG-1 and now halfway through Atlantis. I've forgotten how fun these shows were. The characters have great chemistry with each other and even some of the bad episodes are tolerable because of them.

I still prefer Star Trek. I'm more invested in the world, the politics, and cultures of the different races. Stargate is too heavily slanted towards humans particularly the USA military. Which is really funny because half the cast is Canadian.

 

[Herne]

I enjoy SG1 in the way that I'll watch it if it's on, but I won't buy the season dvd's or anything. It's a good adventure show but I wouldn't get anywhere near invested in the story arcs or characters as I do with Star Trek (comparison made because the OP brought it up). I like the show, I like the characters, but it didn't really grab me in the way that Star Trek did.

 

[Davey Cakes]

Speaking of horrible Season 1 shows....

Ughhhhh

I don't know what's with all these shows having mediocre to bad first seasons.

SG-1 Season 1 wasn't even offensive or anything. It was just boring in spots.

Star Trek TNG has the worst first season of them all and yet it could be considered the best sci-fi show ever. In contention anyway.

Babylon 5 had a rocky start but it works well as an establishing season for the rest of the show. Once everything is basically in place, it all takes off in S2.

Three seasons into SG-1 and it's only very slowly been getting better.

 

[The Librarian]

I have a hard time deciding which I like more: Atlantis or SG1. They both have their pros and cons.

 

[Percy]

Better than Voyager and Enterprise maybe... not the rest though.

Really liked SG1, but once RDA started phoning it in it got pretty bad. Browder was a great replacement but the show was already too far gone by the time he joined.

I'll never understand how anyone thought SG Universe was a good idea though.

 

[firehawk12]

Only now I watched almost all the seasons of Stargate SG-1. I remember trying to watch a couple of years ago but dont liked the first episode. Give another try and loved it.

Why is the story is good:
- SG1 has a little of 80s mixed with 90s style. It is naive, with simple plot solutions, but without being silly or dumb.
- The overall universe is very consistent. In Star Trek universe you have all that human like aliens and civilizations without a good reason. In Stargate almost everything is well explain and made sense.
- The main enemy, the Ghouls, are like space medieval lords fighting amongst themselves. This help to justify why they are so limited and human can fight back.
- Talking about humans, is very cool to see how earth is getting better technology along the seasons. They are clueless in the first episode and have spaceships by the middle of series.
- Most episodes are self-contained, but advance the overall story. Even episodes you think dont have any implications, later in the series become important.
- The writing is funny is self-aware.

Why is the characters are good:
- Since TNG I dont see a serie with so well resolved characters.
- The 4 main actors feels right. Perhaps Michael Shanks is a little off as Daniel Jackson. The 1994 movie actor was better.
- Christopher Judge look serious but you can see he is always smiling playing Teal'c.
- Samantha Carter is the best woman character in any tv series. Amanda Tapping was always wearing a military uniform and looked beautiful and smart anyway all the time.
- And we get Richard Dean Anderson. In the first episodes I could not look at him and think "fuck, it is the MAcGyver". But time go and he becomes 100% Jack O'Neill. Very funny character. The self-aware humor could be horrible in the wrong actor, but he delivered. They seems to having a good time while filming SG1.

Yeah, her sexual organs are on the INSIDE. lol

That said, after the first half of season 1, they seemed to have hit their groove. I'm not sure if it's better than Trek though, but I quite enjoyed it.

I have a hard time deciding which I like more: Atlantis or SG1. They both have their pros and cons.

Atlantis is terribly written. They squandered their characters and decided to make emo vampires the main villains since SG-1 already had the better villains to fight.

 

[Wafflecakes]

For me it blows Star Trek out of the water, no contest.

One of my personal favorite shows of all time.

 

[The Librarian]

Atlantis is terribly written. They squandered their characters and decided to make emo vampires the main villains since SG-1 already had the better villains to fight.

In your opinion. There are a lot of great character moments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUTifpEcMEQ

 

[TyphoonStruggle]

Universe ended too early - it was just getting great after a VERY shaky first season :/

No it wasn't. Stop lying.

I heard this and then forced myself to watch it through. It was still shit at the end.

 

[firehawk12]

In your opinion. There are a lot of great character moments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUTifpEcMEQ

S1 had slimy evil scientist who hated Weir AND he had a Japanese geisha waifu. It felt like I was watching an early episode of SG-1 at that point.
By S2, they had no idea how to write Ford so they just killed him off. He actually was screwed more than Travis Mayweather on Star Trek Enterprise.
By S3, they pissed off the actress who played Weir so much that she basically quit the show, to the point where she wouldn't even cameo anymore (much like Terry Farrel on DS9 I guess), and in desperation wrote in Carter for a season before settling on Picardo's character.

I don't deny that there are good episodes. Much like Voyager has good episodes. But I think running two shows for a while clearly stretched their staff, to the point where it detrimentally affected the quality of both shows.

 

[The Librarian]

S1 had slimy evil scientist who hated Weir AND he had a Japanese geisha waifu. It felt like I was watching an early episode of SG-1 at that point.
By S2, they had no idea how to write Ford so they just killed him off. He actually was screwed more than Travis Mayweather on Star Trek Enterprise.
By S3, they pissed off the actress who played Weir so much that she basically quit the show, to the point where she wouldn't even cameo anymore (much like Terry Farrel on DS9 I guess), and in desperation wrote in Carter for a season before settling on Picardo's character.

I don't deny that there are good episodes. Much like Voyager has good episodes. But I think running two shows for a while clearly stretched their staff, to the point where it detrimentally affected the quality of both shows.

S1: I have no idea what you're talking about here.
S2: Ford wasn't killed off, he just disappeared.
S3: Terry Farrel left because she got hired for Becker.

I didn't mind the cast changes, though I wished Weir had stayed. As far as I could find there is no public reason for why Weir left.

 

[krae_man]

I managed to talk my Mom into watching universe and she got hooked. When I told her I was watching it she was "eh I didn't like it" and I told her to watch it again.

Last time I saw here "OMG Greer is such an amazing character and I loved that episode with Eli's mom, Rush is an Ass but I love him" etc.

 

[firehawk12]

S1: I have no idea what you're talking about here.
S2: Ford wasn't killed off, he just disappeared.
S3: Terry Farrel left because she got hired for Becker.

I didn't mind the cast changes, though I wished Weir had stayed. As far as I could find there is no public reason for why Weir left.

S1: You shouldn't remember him, because he was such a minor character. But he was written just so that Weir can be holier than thou and always be proven right. The Japanese character was even more minor and was there to pretend that the Atlantis expedition was an "international" group (almost 20 years of Stargate and no Chinese team members? Sure. lol). I think they dropped her completely once they realized how racist it was to have a Japanese woman constantly being impressed with the intellect of a white man while doing her thickest Japanese accent.

S2: Yes, they turned him into a Wraith. But it was essentially the same as killing him off, inasmuch as they wrote him off the show and fired him. It was so soon after Enterprise and the tokenism of Travis Mayweather that I couldn't help but be struck by how fast they decided to write off the black character rather than try to fix their writing to give him more to do. A character filled with wide-eyed wonder should be easy to write, especially in the context of a Stargate show. Instead, they killed him off and decided to introduce Ronan instead.

S3: Farrel was willing to come back for cameos, but was so pissed with what they did to her that she refused to even let them use footage of her in the finale. With the actress who played Weir, it got to the point where they basically recast her in S5 for the one cameo episode because the actress refused to come back.

As for why she left, it's all heresay, but the thinking is that she was written off the show to make room for Tapping to come on (since she still had time on her SG-1 contract), and rather than take the demotion from cast member to recurring cast member (which probably means less money and so forth), she decided to just leave. When Tapping was gone after S4, the bridge was still on fire and they couldn't convince her to come back even for that single episode.

 

[The Librarian]

Dude, I'm not going to continue this discussion with you if that's the tone and style you're going to make, and you clearly haven't seen the show in a while.

 

[firehawk12]

Dude, I'm not going to continue this discussion with you if that's the tone and style you're going to make, and you clearly haven't seen the show in a while.

Haha, yep. All my repressed memories of Stargate came back up and I feel bad for it.

There was a point where I was pretty much obsessed with the Stargate franchise, and Atlantis falling flat on its face and ultimately being cancelled was a major sore spot for me. It was like the Star Trek Voyager effect amplified by orders of magnitude because I still had high hopes for Stargate at that point.

 

[TrueGrime]

I'll add Stargate to the long list of sci-fi movies/series I haven't seen.

ST: TNG is on that list.
BSG: The original is on that list.
Farscape: Is on that list..

Ugh.

 

[Wafflecakes]

I thought Universe was complete trash. I have no idea why some gaf members love it so much.

 

[firehawk12]

I thought Universe was complete trash. I have no idea why some gaf members love it so much.

At least no one is stumping for the Stargate cartoon. lol

 

[Kimaka]

S1: You shouldn't remember him, because he was such a minor character. But he was written just so that Weir can be holier than thou and always be proven right. The Japanese character was even more minor and was there to pretend that the Atlantis expedition was an "international" group (almost 20 years of Stargate and no Chinese team members? Sure. lol). I think they dropped her completely once they realized how racist it was to have a Japanese woman constantly being impressed with the intellect of a white man while doing her thickest Japanese accent.

You're talking about Kavanagh right? She didn't like him but McKay and she only showed up once. I'm not sure how you got Japanese geisha waifu with her brief appearance. That segment was to contrast what she thought of McKay (brave, nice) to how he really is.

Kavanagh was a dick but the characters did mention that he was right on occasion. There was even that episode where they considered torturing him and it concluded with them being in the wrong.

S2: Yes, they turned him into a Wraith. But it was essentially the same as killing him off, inasmuch as they wrote him off the show and fired him. It was so soon after Enterprise and the tokenism of Travis Mayweather that I couldn't help but be struck by how fast they decided to write off the black character rather than try to fix their writing to give him more to do. A character filled with wide-eyed wonder should be easy to write, especially in the context of a Stargate show. Instead, they killed him off and decided to introduce Ronan instead.

Ford wasn't a Wraith. He was addicted to the enzyme. It was a pretty bad way to handle his character though. I agree that they should have found some way to develop him rather than introduce another 'scary' brown skinned warrior dude but less intelligent and more violent than Teal'c.