I watched all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1. It was long, but for most of the time, entertaining. I won’t go into the story much, because on the one hand it’s long, on the other, i don’t want to spoil anyone who by chance is yet to see SG-1.
During the ten seasons, i got used to the storywriting habits of the creators. There are a few types of episodes, which come up again and again. One type of course is the main story episode. Going out there to fight the evil aliens, trying to find weapons that can neutralize them, stopping rogue men in black and stuff like that, these are the episodes that don’t get boring after five seasons. The other types are fillers. SGC being attacked by some alien organism, sickness, radiation, something that they have to contain and eliminate if they don’t want to risk the planet (any more). Someone disappearing mysteriously, into another dimension or phase shifting, and they have to figure out how to reverse the effect. Time travel and time paradoxes, on which i simply don’t want to waste words. Offworld missions, where the team or a member is caught by the native residents and they have to free the prisoners. The team being caught up in a war, revolution, rebellion, political dispute or something along these lines, and they have to survive. Stargate travel causing some unexpected catastrophic effects, which they have to neutralize. And a few more. Even if written down like this they seem many, over 200+ episodes it gets quite repetitive after a while.
The main story is quite well written, with a good balance of fighting, stealth and diplomacy, often infused with a nice dose of philosophy and moral talks. What is a god, what is right to do, and so on. Humor is there as well, occasional jokes referring to other series or movies, and i have to say as the series’ progressing, the jokes are getting better and better. Especially in the last few seasons, i was often laughing certain parts of my body off on the hilarious jokes.
It’s also visible that ten seasons indeed took ten years to produce: the characters change quite much. First, they grow old, which is most apparent with Jack O’Neill (two Ls!). The middle-aged MacGyver of the first season goes old man by the finale. Also, they develop certain really interesting abilities. For example, Daniel Jackson is apparently able to learn any language without any particular reference. I mean, it’s quite impressive to be able to phrase an official apology in goa’uld, i guess. Or learning ancient when only a few tablets are available. (Also, he goes really muscular in the later seasons, heads up girls.) Sam Carter could grab a PhD in all fields of natural science by the end of the series—she’s either insanely smart with science not even established yet, or just cheats. Indeed.
The graphics are quite good, sometimes plain amazing, such as the depiction of alien devices and other CG effects. The new wormhole animation in the last seasons, borrowed from Atlantis, also kicks ass.
For sure Stargate SG-1 is a great series, even though i was often speeding up episodes that i already knew the outcome of from the earlier templates.
