I have been re-watching “Stargate SG-1” and was pleasantly surprised to realize I had missed a lot of episodes in the first four or five seasons. This was a 1990’s TV-adaption of a movie, staring Kurt Russell and James Spader. The creators of the show managed to take a great movie, and turn it into an even better TV show. After “Star Trek The Next Generation” ended, this picked up the mantle of best science fiction TV show, in my opinion. In some ways, it even surpassed TNG. The dialogue and chemistry between the main characters is excellent. The actors playing Jack O’Neil (Richard Dean Anderson) and Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) manage to pull off humor without becoming silly, or loosing the seriousness of the situation.
The underlying premise of present-day, wisecracking, Americans going on adventures to new worlds and meeting new civilizations seems more interesting to me than a “post-want”, “socialist utopia” society like the one in “Star Trek”. Plus, they manage to weave in the mythologies of ancient civilizations, as the aliens they encounter, quite effectively. (In this story, most of the ancient gods turn out to have been aliens of one sort or another.)
