Wow the first season of Stargate SG1 is bad

[DougGraves]

I've heard it gets good, so I have them on while doing other things, waiting to see when they get good and following the general plot.

 

The movie description: An interstellar teleportation device, found in Egypt, leads to a planet with humans resembling ancient Egyptians who worship the god Ra.

 

The episode descriptions:

 

• While exploring a world populated by Mongol descendants, Capt. Carter is abducted as a wife of a local warlord and helps a boy and girl in love get together.
• The Stargate base is put in deadly peril when it is contaminated with a dangerous infection which causes its victims to become mindlessly animalistic brutes.
• The SG-1 team is sent after the SG-9 team that has failed to return. They find that SG-9's captain, having been treated like a god by planetary inhabitants, is drunk with power and is tyrannizing them.
• When Jack is injured unintentionally by a crystal alien, the alien duplicates Jack's form and out of fear of retribution tries to heal Jack. He returns to Earth in place of Jack to help Jack get over the death of his son.

 

Nothing about alien gods.  Basically the worst plots from Star Trek redone. 

 

I can only assume at some point this will actually be about alien gods.

[Hyperstrike]

MOST series are rough in their first season.

Stargate was.
Trek TNG/DS9/Voyager all were.

Farscape was
The entire Berlanti Universe's citizens ALL had "first season syndrome".

Eventually, you hit Riker's Beard and things just get MUCH better.
Or you don't (still looking at some of the Berlanti Universe), and the series needs to die horribly.

[Hyperstrike]

The original movie was about an ancient alien who'd taken over a human body and had been living for thousands of years as a "god".
The series tweaks what the alien was and takes a bit of liberty with the material and character depictions.
And then meanders through mythology while creating its own.
 

Basically you have a few types of episodes.

You have the "Fighting the aliens/gods" episodes which are the primary
You have the "Meet the locals/looking for useful stuff" episodes.

You have the "Dangerous tech" episodes.
You have the "This is Top Secret" episodes detailing the secondary Earth-centric storyline.
And every season has a "Clip Show" episode that basically rehashes the season/series.

And once the show hits its groove, it does quite well and can be absolutely hilarious.
Season 4's "Window of Opportunity" is a "Groundhog Day" knockoff.  But it REALLY explores it and is fun as hell.

[CrudeVileTerror]

I'd argue that first season of Farscape was a smidge better than most first seasons of other classic sci-fi series.

 

But, yeaaaaaah.  First season of SG-1 had problems.

When they let Amanda Tapping and Richard Dean Anderson -own- their characters though, rather than following the script to the letter, things really improved.

Kinda got ridiculous with shark-jumping by the time R.D.A. left, though.

So, sweet spot . . . 3rd to 7th season, I think.

[WanderingAries]

The first season of Firefly was the bomb....*cries*

 

But yeah, SG1 gets better overall, especially once it starts mixing with SGA/SGU.

 

Hopefully the rumors of an SGU pickup are true and we get to see what happens there, but many of the actors may not be available anymore.

[Hyperstrike]

3 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

I'd argue that first season of Farscape was a smidge better than most first seasons of other classic sci-fi series.

 

But, yeaaaaaah.  First season of SG-1 had problems.

When they let Amanda Tapping and Richard Dean Anderson -own- their characters though, rather than following the script to the letter, things really improved.

Kinda got ridiculous with shark-jumping by the time R.D.A. left, though.

So, sweet spot . . . 3rd to 7th season, I think.

I dunno.  Sometimes shark-jumping can be an artform unto itself.

 

[CrudeVileTerror]

True enough.  There was plenty in 7th season, and even before that.  I just personally felt the quality of jumps dipped by 8th.

 

EDIT:  Actually, I just checked online.  I was actually okay with 8th season.  It was 9th that started to push it for me.

Edited January 22, 2021 by CrudeVileTerror
Correction.

[GM Tock]

Will you people get out of my Netflix account?  (12 episodes into the first season myself.  Just started this on January 1st after marathoning all of Star Trek in 2020.)

[CrudeVileTerror]

Sorry.  I'm afraid I can't do that, Tahquitz.

But I do hope you enjoy the ride!

[Darmian]

HA! Though I've been thoroughly burned by "Once you get by the first Season it's great" too many times. I do not have the time for that crap anymore.

 

(Love Firefly, but I maintain it's strength comes from it being half a season of good episodes, and we weren't subjected to the other half which might have been dire.)

[Hyperstrike]

10 hours ago, GM Tahquitz said:

Will you people get out of my Netflix account?  (12 episodes into the first season myself.  Just started this on January 1st after marathoning all of Star Trek in 2020.)

Welcome to the Dark Side.
We lied about the cookies!
Here's a 1lb bag of crack cocaine!

[Hyperstrike]

10 hours ago, Darmian said:

HA! Though I've been thoroughly burned by "Once you get by the first Season it's great" too many times. I do not have the time for that crap anymore.

 

(Love Firefly, but I maintain it's strength comes from it being half a season of good episodes, and we weren't subjected to the other half which might have been dire.)

The other thing with Firefly is how shodily it was handled by the networks.

Actually seeing the entire thing in-order does wonders for the show.

And being able to simply binge it adds to the enjoyment.

With the number of sci-fi shows on TV when it released, and the indifferent presentation by the networks, watching, then waiting for next week probably didn't help the show much.

[GM Tock]

It's interesting how Television has First Season Syndrome, while movies have the opposite - very few sequels meet or exceed the original.

[Hyperstrike]

14 minutes ago, GM Tahquitz said:

It's interesting how Television has First Season Syndrome, while movies have the opposite - very few sequels meet or exceed the original.

The movie industry is fundamentally different from Television.

Original vehicles tend to be "go big or go home" in films.  Whereas TV is about spreading that production money across an entire season and keeping costs low enough that they don't get insta-cancelled before they can syndicate.

However, AFTER that, the film industry is generally VERY conservative and risk-averse.

The class-defining example were the Salkinds.  Look at the Superman films.  Every sequel was "cut corners, spend less, they're pulled in by the name..."
And for three films?  They were right.
Most productions aren't QUITE that nakedly brutal about it today (not that they're not still brutal)...
The tendency of mega-blockbusters to inflate budgets offsets this somewhat, because it's been realized that when you do "bigger and better" you actually have to PAY FOR "bigger and better".

Television, at least for a while, can be convinced to spend profligately on productions that are producing results, or who find a way to cut costs to the bone without killing the formula, pooping out or alienating anyone.  The Simpsons...SG1 was also one of those shows.  Granted, there was a quality drop obvious to truly hardcore fans.  But for everyone else, they simply turned their brains off and enjoyed.

[Infinitum]

18 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

Eventually, you hit Riker's Beard and things just get MUCH better.

lol

 

Favorite scene was ST insurrection riker: smoother than an androids butt - data:  shakes head no.  lol

[Infinitum]

Babylon 5 didn't have a bad first season - and it stillngot better as it went IMO. But that was because the story fleshed out and the complexity was designed to be beginning middle and end from the beginning.

[WanderingAries]

On 1/21/2021 at 10:31 PM, WanderingAries said:

The first season of Firefly was the bomb....*cries*

Not a Single one of you followed my bait?

Disappointment, the lot of you!

[Hyperstrike]

5 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

Not a Single one of you followed my bait?

Disappointment, the lot of you!

No.  We all got it.
#DoNotFeedTheAnimals

[CrudeVileTerror]

Keeping the ball rolling . . . or I suppose keeping the upright stargate rolling:

Favourite Stargate villain?  

[TheOtherTed]

I recently realized I'd never seen a single episode, so to keep my nerd cred, I started watching it.  Four episodes into Season 2 and, well, I'm wondering if there's a good point I can skip ahead to...

[Techwright]

On 1/23/2021 at 1:24 AM, WanderingAries said:

Not a Single one of you followed my bait?

Disappointment, the lot of you!

Get used to disappointment.

17 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Keeping the ball rolling . . . or I suppose keeping the upright stargate rolling:

Favourite Stargate villain?  

Baal.  Right from his gravity-bending premier episode, I knew we were in for something different.    "Todd" was pretty good, too.

 

I would also like to note I have a different view regarding the last seasons of Stargate.  It was the overall villain group that weakened the show.  I felt the Stargate crew was fine.  Sure, there were changes on the core team, but I liked those changes, some of them were fantastic, and it felt more natural to see changes in a core team over time, then to have the full core team onboard until the retirement home.  I felt most (not all) of the enemies during that time were poorly written, however, and devolved the antagonists' role to something akin to cheesy 1930's serial sci-fi villains.  There's  a place for that sort of thing, just not in Stargate.  I'd say more, but I'd probably spoil the show for newcomers.  I did enjoy it enough, though that I went back last year and rewatched all of both SG1 and Atlantis.

[Infinitum]

On 1/23/2021 at 8:25 AM, CrudeVileTerror said:

Keeping the ball rolling . . . or I suppose keeping the upright stargate rolling:

Favourite Stargate villain?  

Deadpools girlfriend.

[Hyperstrike]

22 hours ago, Techwright said:

Get used to disappointment.

Baal.  Right from his gravity-bending premier episode, I knew we were in for something different.    "Todd" was pretty good, too.

 

I would also like to note I have a different view regarding the last seasons of Stargate.  It was the overall villain group that weakened the show.  I felt the Stargate crew was fine.  Sure, there were changes on the core team, but I liked those changes, some of them were fantastic, and it felt more natural to see changes in a core team over time, then to have the full core team onboard until the retirement home.  I felt most (not all) of the enemies during that time were poorly written, however, and devolved the antagonists' role to something akin to cheesy 1930's serial sci-fi villains.  There's  a place for that sort of thing, just not in Stargate.  I'd say more, but I'd probably spoil the show for newcomers.  I did enjoy it enough, though that I went back last year and rewatched all of both SG1 and Atlantis.

Part of the draw of SG1 is there's lots of cool moments, but there's no ONE "moment".
It's just a consistent string of mostly retcon-free development over time.  So you can, if you're paying attention, draw clear lines between disparate events in the series.

Also, the moustace-twirling villainy was part of what endeared me to the villains.
The fact that they WERE so hammy, after centuries.  But weren't REALLY cognizant about how stereotypically evil they were.
Meanwhile, Jack & Crew are looking at these guys with cocked eyebrows going "Is he SERIOUS?"

[GM Tock]

Not going to lie, saw Robert Kinsey and thought to myself, "Damn it Jellico!"

(Ronny Cox still one of the best 'foils' to be cast in any series. 😄 )

[TheOtherTed]

Ok, so, nearing the end of season 2, and I'm starting to warm up to it a bit.  On the Star Trek scale, I'd place it a step ahead of Voyager, maybe two steps ahead of Enterprise, and about a mile ahead of Discovery.  Objectively speaking.

 

*looks for the "shifty eyes" emote without scucess*