I reviewed the 3rd volume first so when I went back to the library I decided, “Eh, what the heck?” and got the next two just for kicks. Gives me something to review and besides, there are a few episodes I haven’t seen the very beginning of, or I just like a lot. I’ll leave out the part where I think Michael Shanks is delicious. Whoops. Too late.

Episode 1: Children of the Gods The Stargate movie has long since been over and the Stargate facility is, well, pretty much defunct. But that was before it was activated...and Jaffa came streaming through, killing and kidnapping soldiers. So who do you get to deal with this? Someone who’s been through the Stargate before – Colonel Jack O’Neill. Here begins the series with a mission to meet up with Dr. Daniel Jackson (who stayed on the planet Abydos) and hopefully take care of the new threat to Earth. Oh, if only it were that simple…

You know, I’ve never seen the very beginning of this series until now. I always wondered where they got that random army chick (poor woman). But *raises hand* question – how did they dial back out again? Oh well. Ignore the questions and be happy the casting was so good; as much as I enjoy Kurt Russell, Richard Dean Anderson starts out strong and will be that way the whole series. Kudos. And again, as much as I love James Spader (yay Boston Legal!), Michael Shanks makes for a fantastic Daniel Jackson. For those of you who saw the movie, Skaara is the same kid. I think stuff like that is nifty. Of course, creativity points for adding Amanda Tapping for the new character of Samantha Carter and Christopher Judge as Teal’c.

By the way, this is a long episode – something else I never really realized before. It’s over an hour, which is why there are only three episodes on this particular volume. Uh, actually, this is listed as the pilot episode, which is why I guess they got away with full frontal nudity on Sha're, something that made me completely flatline for a moment – you don’t see that on the Sci Fi channel.

Episode 2: The Enemy Within Kawalsky, a member of Jack O’Neill’s original mission has a small problem. It’s inside his mind, and it’s very unhappy. No one is sure how the Goa’uld got there, but the real focus is how to get it out. If that’s possible anyway.

Episode 3: Emancipation The Shavadai people are a lot like Mongols from long ago. Daniel thinks so at least. However, they do have a bit of an issue when it comes to Carter – women don’t have much say on their planet, so with Carter’s American woman attitude, things get a little awkward. They go from bad to worse when she suddenly goes missing.

FAVORITE! I love this episode even if it is a little hokey at some parts. Seeing all three guys gawk at Carter in her new blue getup is pretty funny, even though I think it doesn’t do her justice and it’s a bit ugly. I was also excited when I saw Cari-Hiroyuki Tagawa as the essential bad guy of the show. He’s a great bad buy; fantastic Shang-Tsung in Mortal Kombat. It’s just fun. Gotta love the dialogue too:

Jack: "Guess I’ll have to cancel that Oprah interview."
Teal'c: "What is an ‘Oprah’?"

And cue little chuckle. I hadn’t noticed it the first time, but when you put this DVD in, some guy says “Enter the Stargate” like instructions to click the gate (or hit the enter button on your remote).

Back to the show, I like how they started out making people all frosty when they came through the gate just like in the original movie. In fact, seeing the whole pilot episode was a bit of a treat. I never knew there was all that other stuff in that first episode. Pretty cool and something all Stargate fans should look into. It’s like a small movie – similar to what they’re going to do at the end of the present Stargate season (whoohoo!).

For a beginning show, we’ve got some decent special effects – which means they’re better than the junk in a lot of other made for TV movies have. And even though they didn’t get David Arnold to do the music as he did in the original, it’s easy enough to copy his work down and made a few extra notes to apply to certain situations, so it all works out nicely. When there hasn’t been a decent sci-fi show in a long time, this makes for a nice cool drink. If you haven’t watched any Stargate yet and you enjoy sci-fi, you definitely need to get your hands on this series. Even if you think it’s kind of corny sometimes, you’d still have to admit that it’s a lot of fun.

NT

Stargate Season 1:
Stargate SG-1: Volume 1
Stargate SG-1: Volume 2
Stargate SG-1: Volume 3
Stargate SG-1: Volume 4
Stargate SG-1: Volume 5

Stargate Season 4:
Stargate SG-1: The Complete 4th Season

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV