Thebes

Production number:

101A, 101B.

Writers:

Brad Wright & Jonathan Glassner.

Director:

Mario Azzopardi.

Cast:

Richard Dean Anderson, Christopher Judge, Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping.

One year after the mission in Stargate (1994), the Abydos stargate is believed destroyed and the Earth stargate is inactive. However, when a group of aliens, lead by a man with glowing eyes, appear from the Earth stargate, Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) is called back from retirement. He leads a team to Abydos, where he finds Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) alive and well, and with a new theory — the stargate can go to other places than just Abydos. In fact, says Jackson, there’s a network of stargates all over the galaxy. Just like in the feature, the only other scientist present, Captain Doctor Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping), initially scoffs at Jackson’s theory, but he’s of course soon proved right, Abydos is attacked, and the stargate program is reactivated. SG-1 (Jack, Daniel, Samantha) heads to Chulak to rescue Daniel’s wife, Sha’re (Vaitiare Bandera), and Skaara (Alexis Cruz, the only actor reprising his role from the feature) and meet up with the “First Prime of Apophis”, Teal’c (Christopher Judge).

Well, this is certainly a pilot: you can feel Wright and Glassner trying to find their footing. They’ve yet to quite hit the irreverent tone that would become the series’ hallmark, and there’s plenty of clunky dialogueⁱ and the actors, especially Christopher Judge as Teal’c, haven’t found their characters. RDA is on his way to the iconic O’Neill but he’s nowhere near as funny as he’d become. He is still very much building on Kurt Russell’s tortured-over-his-son’s-death prototype. There are glimpses of his future deadpan snarkiness, but he’s not quite hitting the delivery. Shanks is Shanks — I see why people think he’s a good actor, and I often agree, but I also often think he could stand to dial it back a bit. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a reserved, laconic Swede, so maybe that’s the problem. Amanda Tapping does what she can with the material she’s been handed and she’s has some moments of that trademark Carter enthusiasm that I find so infectious — it’s fun to see someone enjoy their job — but, much like RDA, she’s not quite the canonical Carter.

It’s disappointing to see what they’ve done with Sha’re. Mili Avital’s Shauri was an intelligent, competent woman, whereas Vaitiare Bandera’s Sha’re isn’t much more than a distressed damsel with a nude scene. Along with the annoying, combative way they’ve written Carter, it’s not a good episode for women, though at least Carter is competent.

SG-1‘s allure has always been it’s mix of interesting mythology and self-reflexive humour. Children of the Gods focuses much too much on the former at the expense of the latter; it’s just not funny enough. And even when they try to be funny, they fall short because it’s too obviously written and performed.

Miscellaneous meditations

• What’s everyone doing in dress uniform all the time? Looks really strange.
• I’ve long ago accepted that aliens speak English in Stargate, but I wish they were consistent with it. Why does Teal’c speak English when the Chulak priests don’t? Actually, why is Teal’c apparently bilingual, speaking both Goa’uld and English throughout the episode? A recurring annoyance in the seriesⁱⁱ.
• How the heck did Apophis open an outgoing wormhole from Earth? He figured out the dialing computer in ten seconds?ⁱⁱⁱ
• See how hard Jaffa are to kill in this episode? Yeah, that won’t last.

Note: In 2009, MGM released a remastered and re-edited “final cut” of Children of the Gods which has new visual effects and cuts out a lot of the fluff and the clunkier pieces of dialogue. Overall, it’s a much more successful piece of television; it’s still not a great episode, but it’s certainly good enough to be an important part of the SG-1 canon. I might do a full review later, but for now, let’s call it 3 stars.

1. Reaching a nadir in the infamous “Just because my reproductive organs are on the inside” speech when Carter meets O’Neill. ↩
2. I would love, by the way, to see a show with genuinely alien aliens, with whom communication is realistically hard, but I’m not holding my breath. Threshold showed promise, but was cut short by the fell blade of low ratings and subsequent cancellation. ↩
3. Obviously, he had to use a hand-device (like the one in Continuum), but if such a thing exists, why bother with the DHDs? Those Ancients sure were a wacky bunch. ↩

Tags: 1990s, Alexis Cruz, Amanda Tapping, Brad Wright, Children of the Gods, Christopher Judge, Jonathan Glassner, Mario Azzopardi, Michael Shanks, Mili Avital, Richard Dean Anderson, Science Fiction, SG-1, Stargate, Vaitiare Bandera

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