Stargate: SG-1 Re-Watch: Children of the Gods (Season 1 Episodes 1 & 2)

Alright, Stargate fans! Since Stargate: SG-1 celebrated its 20^thanniversary last year, and fans recently pushed to revive the franchise in a tweetstorm in March, we think now might be a good time for a re-watch.

Each week we’ll be discussing an episode of Stargate SG-1 starting with two-part pilot episode Stargate: SG-1 Season 1 Episodes 1 & 2, “Children of the Gods.”

Stargate: SG-1 premiered in 1997 and was a spinoff of the 1994 movie Stargate starring James Spader and Kurt Russell. In An Oral History of Stargate: SG-1 on SYFY Wire, co-creators Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner said that they saw the movie and realized that plot would work much better as a series.

Spoiler alert: they were right!

At the time, Glassner and Wright were both working on The Outer Limits for MGM Studios and were able to convince the studio to give them the rights. Ultimately, the series would become a franchise that outperformed its inspiration launching two spin-offs and the recently released Stargate: Origins on Stargate Command. Glassner told SYFY Wire:

Brad and I spent three months literally studying the movie and saying well, there are all these symbols. Why does it only lead to one place? It’s got to lead to other places. How do we solve that? What was Ra? How does the gate work? How do people get home from places where the gate is? We had to figure out all the mechanics of it.

The result is “Children of the Gods,” and it wastes no time with exposition, and instead folds it in slowly. What makes “Children of the Gods” so successful is that it doesn’t ignore the origins of the story. Wright and Glassner had to make some changes to the film storyline, like the location of Abydos, but for the most part, it’s pretty much the same.

The biggest difference is casting. A TV budget in 1997 couldn’t afford Kurt Russell and James Spader and recast most of the roles with the exception of Ska’ra. Aside from this, it keeps most of the mythology and just expands on it.

This is a big deal because prior to this TV series based on films didn’t usually do well. And now, almost 21 years later, we have the likes of Bates Motel and The Exorcist. (And yes, as you read this paragraph, please, take a moment and mull over the fact that James Spader is currently on The Blacklist and imagine how things have changed in the TV industry.)

Getting into “Children of the Gods,” since the exposition from the film is folded in so well, viewers don’t need to see the movie to understand the TV series. If you haven’t seen the film, you’re basically dropped into the action and have to figure out the history as you go once the teaser ends. Basically, imagine you’re the General who has only read the events of the movie summarized in a report.

“Children of the Gods” opens with some United State Air Force officers playing poker in an unknown room that no one ever comes to. Behind them is a giant ring with a tarp and a blonde air force officer notices it moving. She approaches, but the ring underneath starts spinning and a wormhole is established.

Moments later, serpent guards come through the gate with glowing yellow eyes. The suits mechanical helmets disengage revealing human-like faces. A standoff occurs, backup is called, and just as General Hammond shows up, the female officer is kidnapped and taken back through the event horizon.

This opening sequence introduces the audience to the bad guy, but the token female officer is never named. Furthermore, the idea of going to rescue her is never brought up, and what happens to her is never discussed.

The audience ultimately sees her fate, but she’s an expendable female character, and reading this storyline two decades later it’s troubling. Between this, and how Captain Carter is introduced, this series is not getting on the right foot with its female characters.

After the teaser, we’re introduced to the new Colonel Jack O’Neill, played by Richard Dean Anderson, you may know him as the eponymous character in MacGuyver. It’s been a year since the original stargate mission, a mission that left Dr. Daniel Jackson behind on a planet called Abydos.

O’Neill is retired and seems to have no interest when Major Samuels comes to fetch him.  But the mention of the stargate gets his attention. O’Neill goes to meet General Hammond, played by Don S. Davis, and the two have an exchange that gives the viewer a solid idea of what’s coming.

HAMMOND:  …Me, I’m on my last tour. Time to start getting my thoughts together, maybe write a book.  You ever think about writing a book about your exploits in the line of duty?

O’NEILL: I thought about it, but then I’d have to shoot anyone who actually read it….That’s a joke sir, most of the work the last ten years was classified.

The General gets O’Neill up to speed regarding the events of a teaser, including one dead alien, which despite its humanoid appearance, isn’t human. The body on the table has a pouch in its abdomen similar to that of a marsupial.

And that’s when the events of the movie come into play. O’Neill begins discussing Abydos. The story of a god called Ra who brought the humans to a distant planet years ago. He talks about how Ra was actually an alien that lived inside a human body.

They go over the mission from the movie. Colonel O’Neill and his team were supposed to go through the stargate, assess any potential threat, and detonate a nuclear warhead and blow up the stargate on Abydos if a threat was found.

They didn’t do that, instead, they used a nuke to blow up the bad guys from their spaceship.  and the return of these new aliens with glowing-eyes have led General Hammond to assess that somehow the stargate on Abydos was unburied, and he plans to remedy that by sending through another nuke, prompting O’Neill to come clean.

Now, with a new threat, Colonel O’Neill wants to go back to Abydos and bring Daniel Jackson home.

Once “Children of the Gods” gets through the exposition that explains the original mission, it begins to establish relationships between the main characters. O’Neill and Hammond are getting to know one another, but Charles Kawalsky, played by Jay Acavone, and O’Neill go back to the original mission.

It also gives us a sense of Colonel O’Neill and Dr. Jackson’s relationship. O’Neill and Dr. Jackson didn’t get along very well in the movie because of the clash of military and scientific backgrounds.

That didn’t stop O’Neill and Jackson from establishing a couple of jokes. Dr. Jackson has allergies, so instead of sending a robot probe through the wormhole, O’Neill sends a full tissue box. It comes back empty hours later with a note saying “thanks send more.”

When you think about it, sending tissues through is actually kind of genius. Instead of sending a piece of machinery that could be interpreted as a hostile threat, the tissues are just a box of fluffy paper and are more likely to confuse someone on the other side.

Then again, these are aliens, so whose to say they wouldn’t think the tissues are magic and start an intergalactic war.

With proof Dr. Jackson is alive, O’Neill is recalled to active duty and they begin planning the next trip to Abydos. But the team isn’t complete; they’re expecting a Captain Carter, coming in from the Pentagon.

Hammond introduces this new character as Sam Carter and O’Neill assumes that Sam is a male.

Enter, Captain Samantha Carter, played by Amanda Tapping, and a boatload of sexism to come along with it. Immediately Kawalsky criticizes her use of the abbreviated version of Samantha:

CARTER: You don’t have to worry Major, I played with dolls when I was a kid.

KAWALSKY: G.I. Joe?

CARTER: No, Major Matt Mason.

KAWALSKY: Oh….(turns to guy next to him) Who?

In future episodes, Sam goes on to save the day and pull the teams bacon out of the fire a lot. Coming back to this scene is a good reminder of the shaky ground her character started off on.

Even when Colonel O’Neill attempts to belittle her by calling her doctor instead of Captain she puts him in his place telling him it’s appropriate that he calls her by her rank, not her salutation, and she isn’t afraid to call out his sexism.

I am going to use the powers of the rewatch here, and remind myself that aside from Stargate: SG-1 Season 1 Episode 3 “Emancipation” – we’ll talk about that one in a couple weeks – I don’t recall Sam having to pass this kind of muster again. Which is a good thing, because these awkward moments that point out she has ovaries would get old very fast.

Anyway, it takes almost half an hour of run time before the team goes through the stargate again and viewers meet the people of Abydos and Dr. Daniel Jackson, played by Michael Shanks.

Once the band is back together, Carter, Jackson, and O’Neill get to talking and immediately bust a myth: that the stargate can only dial Abydos. While Daniel’s been on Abydos he’s been exploring, and in doing so has found a cartouche with seven symbol addresses.

Carter and Jackson immediately bond because while Jackson has been trying to chart the cartouche, Carter has been running permutations at the Pentagon and none of them are working. If each address is part of a network of stargates, they haven’t been accounting for an expanding universe.

It turns out once your space traveling technology ages 50,000 years with planets drifting further and further apart, after a while you’ll dial and not make a connection. Carter thinks she can design a dialing program that will adjust for doppler shift so the stargate can dial other places.

While we’ve figured out the mystery of why the gate only seems to go to Abydos, there’s a load of fresh complications brewing. The same serpent guards come through the Abydos

The same serpent guards come through the Abydos stargate and kidnap Ska’ra and Sha’re, Daniel’s wife. The serpent guard in a gold suit believes that Sha’re is ‘the one’ as he takes her through the stargate.

By the end of part one, several Abydonians are dead as well as a few members of the U.S. Air Force. O’Neill has orders to bring Jackson back to Earth, and they will go after Sha’re and Ska’ra. But before Daniel goes, he tells the Abydonians to cover the stargate for a year so nothing can come through.

In a year, they’re going to uncover it, and on that day Daniel will try to bring Sha’re home. However, if he doesn’t Abydos has to cut itself off forever.

It’s very information heavy and dense, but by the end of the first half, we have new possibilities and more complications. The second half of “Children of the Gods” delves more into the aliens the team encountered and answers the question of what happened to that woman in the teaser.

As the story of those serpent guards comes into play. We see the woman who was abducted at the start of the episode, brought before the guard in the gold suit. He wants her the host for his Queen, and calls over a woman who uncovers her stomach to reveal a marsupial pouch.

Out of the pouch comes a being that looks like a cross between a snake and a dragon, who wails at the gold serpent before disappearing back into her hole. This means the alien has rejected her and the gold serpent fries her brain.

Like I said, she was expendable. This is a plot point I don’t think would have bothered me if she was given a name, or just acknowledged at all. Her abduction and death is really just an illustration and way into the world for the audience, but the fact that no one seems to notice that she’s gone is bothersome.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, General Hammond, Captain Carter, and Dr. Jackson are still trying to answer that very question: who are these guys. With Dr. Jackson back on Earth, the story of Ra is fleshed out more.

Ra was a being whose race was dying. So he took the body of a human as a host. He brought humans to a distant planet and borrowed the religion of Ancient Egypt to enslave them. While they know that they aren’t dealing with Ra, Dr. Jackson says that there is no reason they can’t be dealing with another being of the same species.

With the two attacks so far, the President has given General Hammond the authority to assemble nine teams that will operate in secret. The duties will be to perform reconnaissance, determine threats, and make peaceful contact with the people of these worlds.

Colonel O’Neill’s team is designated SG-1, and consists of O’Neill and Captain Carter. Jackson wants to joins to join the team but Hammond insists he stay on base to act as a liaison to the other teams.

Which, when you think about it, makes no sense. When we met Carter, they said she says she’s been working on the gate technology for two years before Daniel made it work. Hammond even says:

HAMMOND: …she’s smarter than you are, Colonel! Especially in matters related to the stargate.

While Daniel might have more knowledge of the aliens on the other side, how is sending Carter, who has information on the technology, into an unknown situation a good plan?

I don’t get feeling there is a line of people with Carter’s expertise waiting in the wings. However, you can also make an argument that Carter has military training so she’s more likely to know how to react in the face of a threat.

As SG-1 gets ready to start their mission they are reminded that rescuing Dr. Jackson’s wife if a secondary objective and they are told that they have twenty-four hours to complete the mission or SG-2, headed by Kawalsky will scrub the mission and leave without them.

This detail isn’t exactly critical because they also introduce identification codes that open the gate’s iris.  Entering the correct code gives the traveler access to the other side by opening the metal barricade placed millimeters from the event horizon of the wormhole. In short, with the iris code, the matter traveling through can’t reconstitute itself and dies.

Hammond also says that if they don’t return in twenty-four hours their codes will be locked out of the system. So even if Kawalsky and SG-2 get back, no one is going to be running a rescue mission to save them.

Elsewhere on the planet, the serpent guards are selecting new humans to pass muster for hosts. It’s Sha’re’s turn to be evaluated as a host, and this time the creature accepts.

Depending on where you watch this, this sequence is cut differently. The first season of Stargate: SG-1 aired on Showtime, and in the original cut Sha’re becoming a host involves more nudity and is more graphic, showing the Goa’uld inserting itself into the back of her neck. The cut on Hulu doesn’t depict this, but it is on the DVDs.

This is a process we never see again, and it’s a good thing because it’s terrifying. We’ll meet other hosts and former hosts in future seasons, and we’ll see how being overtaken by these creatures affects them, but Sha’re’s possession is enough to draw the line of: SG-1 is good, snake-dragon monster is bad.

While this is happening SG-1 and SG-2 are making their way to a nearby town. Daniel meets some locals, and they ask him if they’re there to choose and Daniel says yes and then asks to be taken to a town. They’re taken to a place called Chulak. where the residents think that SG-1 is a group of gods.

While they’re eating the head serpent guard comes in and presents Sha’re as the residents’ new queen, and Daniel has an outburst that lands them in the chamber with the rest of the prisoners.

It’s a slow burn for the show to get here, but once they are locked up with the prisoners we get to meet another critical player. Teal’c, played by Christopher Judge, is one of the serpent guards seen at the right hand of the man in gold throughout several scenes.

While SG-1 is trying to bust out of their prison, Teal’c sees O’Neill’s watch and has questions about their origins. Daniel draws one of the glyphs in the sand Teal’c helmet snaps shut and he walks away. The interaction is brief but leads to Teal’c betrayal later in the episode and, more importantly, lays the groundwork for Teal’c’s storyline.

This scene also gives the man in gold that kidnapped Sha’re and Ska’ra, as well as the Air Force Sergeant, a name. Jackson identifies him as Apophis, the serpent god who in Egyptian mythology was Ra’s rival.

But the nightmare isn’t over year, the gate is going to close in ninety minutes, and Apophis and his queen are choosing hosts for their children. Ska’ra is among the chosen, but Daniel, who is desperate to save Sha’re, begs to be chosen and raises a question that will be wrestled with in the early seasons.

JACKSON: How much would I remember if you chose me?…Something of the host must survive.

With both Sha’re and Ska’ra taken as hosts, and with SG-1 not knowing exactly what they’re dealing with it’s a fair question, and one that will be debated as the series moves forward.

As the serpent guards follow Apophis’ orders to kill the rest of the prisoners O’Neill and Teal’c shift the narrative as O’Neill pleads with him to save the prisoners, and Teal’c turns on his fellow serpent guards.

O’NEILL:  I can save these people! Help me! Help me.

TEAL’C:  Many have said that…but you’re the first I believe could do it.

They free the prisoners and Teal’c aligns himself with O’Neill and SG-1. The psychology of his decision isn’t discussed here, but he does offer some insight into the major players of the story so far.

Teal’c is a Jaffa who is bred to serve so that the Goa’uld, the race of snake-dragon aliens, may live. When the team looks confused he shows them his abdomen, where he has a pouch that holds an infant Goa’uld. The Jaffa and the Gao’uld exist in a symbiosis, and in exchange for carrying an infant the Jaffa is given perfect health and a long life. If he removes it, he’ll die.

A showdown ensues at the gate where both SG teams and Apophis are going. The chosen humans, including Ska’ra have been taken as hosts, and the Gao’uld are heading home through the gate.

During the final standoff, several things happen. First, SG-1 can’t stop Ska’ra and Sha’re from going through the gate, setting off the first trek of the series. Second, they save a bunch of refugees from that prison cell. Last, a Goa’uld leaves an injured Jaffa and implants itself in Kawalsky’s neck, but no one notices.

O’Neill and Kawalsky make it through the gate in the nick of time, and the iris closes behind them. But this isn’t the end. The refugees are going to be sent home through the gate, the Goa’uld in Kawalsky hasn’t been detected, and Sha’re and Ska’ra are still out there.

Overall “Children of the Gods” does a good job of giving us enough information so that new viewers can enter the series without erasing the original movie. Yes, there is a lot of exposition and explanation, but it establishes the world enough for us to understand how it works. That being said, this is technology light years beyond the humans, so there are going to be things that come up.

As the series continues into its first few hour-long episodes, it will begin to wrestle to some of the ideas behind gate travel, and the threats they are facing. In short, Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner were right: this story was much better off as a television show.

Anything to add Stargate: SG-1 fans? Have you rewatched the show recently? Leave your comments below, we’d love to hear from you.

All ten seasons of Stargate: SG-1 are currently available on Hulu.

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