August 1, 2008

• Favorite Scenes: Stargate SG-1

  On Fridays I try to share some of my favorite scenes in books, movies, television, anime, video games or whatever.  This is another installment of that series. Here are the rest.

  It totally surprised me when Stargate SG-1 became one of my favorite television shows of all time. First of all I thought the Stargate movie was mediocre at best. For the first few years of SG-1 I didn’t watch it at all.

  Then I started watching it occasionally still really skeptical and sort of mocking it as I watched. I mean… it sometimes comes off as a really cheesy TV show. Sort of cheesy like those old Hercules and Xena shows only with a very different style. Or maybe like Andromeda. Did anybody else watch that? I tended to go more with the deep serious drama series or else just watch cartoons.

  Anyway… so I was mocking it and watching occasionally when all of a sudden after just a month or so the oddest thing happened.

  I fell in love with the series.

  Suddenly I couldn’t get enough of it. I wanted to see every episode. And I did. And I loved every minute of it.

  What makes SG-1 so special? So weirdly addictive?  It’s hard to pinpoint.

  But if I’d have to wager a guess, I’d say a majority of its charm comes in its place in the middle ground of television scifi comedies and dramas. It’s not absurdly silly. It’s not super deep. It has drama but doesn’t beat you over the head with it. It doesn’t try to make you feel as if you’re in a life or death situation by watching it. It had weird science puzzles, a large military component, and crazy religious themes but it wasn’t deeply locked into any of these ideological paradigms. It doesn’t make you feel as if you are being hit upside the head with the writers’ political or social philosophy.

  In short, Stargate SG-1 was great because it didn’t take itself too seriously.  And I loved that. You could enjoy it and get to know the characters without feeling pressured to do so. Miss an episode? So what. Big deal. It’d still be there tomorrow and just as enjoyable.  It’s so different from modern dramas like 24 and Lost and Battlestar Galactica which all seem to revolve around the *shock* factor. In each episode of those shows it’s like the writers think “ok what can we make happen that people will least expect”. And so they do that. It doesn’t have to make any sense. It doesn’t have to fit into an overall story. If it’s shocking it’ll sell. So that’s how they write. 

  SG-1 was very very different.

  It just made you feel good to watch it. It was just a show about friendship really. About four friends saving the world together. No deep romance, drama, philosophy, religion, humour, satire, sarcasm, or anything you usually find shows revolve around. This was just friendship. The friendship between four amazingly well developed characters. And it was sooo much fun to watch!

  It was really hard to pick scenes from this show to list as my favorite. I like so many episodes. In particular I like the first episode with the replicators. I like most episodes featuring the Asgard Thor. The Black Hole episode was very cool. I love the episode where Daniel Jackson dreams of himself becoming super knowledgible and totally evil. That episode has the line I always remembered that goes something like this: “The evil within me is too strong to resist. The only way to win is to deny it battle.” 

  But my favorite episode is Season 4 Episode 6. Titled: “Window of Opportunity”.  It’s a classical Groundhog Day scenario episode. The plot is Colonel O’Neill and Teal’c get trapped in a time loop and keep repeating the same day over and over again for an indeterminate amount of time.

  The episode is just totally crazy hilarious. It reveals the best of the ironic semi-self mocking humour that permeates the entire series. Here’s a clip from it:

  Wasn’t that an incredible sequence?

  But believe it or not that’s not my favorite scene in this episode. Rather the scene I love, the scene that brought the entire episode together with the perfect conclusion was the very ending. The encounter in which Teal’c and O’Neill finall free themselves from the loop by confronting the mastermind behing it.

  I can’t find the clip of this scene and I don’t have time to rip it myself.     But I found a pdf with the script. Here’s the part I liked:

  36.54.04 DANIEL- Malikai. We have to reset those controls or the loop’s gonna start all over
  again.
  36.59.14 MALIKAI – I’m counting on it…
  MALIKAI (CONT) – I need more time. Once I’ve correctly deciphered the symbols on
  the altar I will be able to master the time device.

  37.07.29 O’NEILL- Why so you can be king of GroundhogDay?
  37.10.18 MALIKAI-  Do you think I would do this for personal power?. She–You wouldn’t
  understand.
  37.21.00 O’NEILL – What happened?
  37.27.22 MALIKAI-  She died. Twelve years ago. When I found this place and discovered its
  true purpose I dedicated myself to unlocking its mysteries.

  37.37.16 CARTER (OS) – So you could go back to save her.
  37.40.09 MALIKAI (OS)- No, that would…
  MALIKAI (CONT) – be quite impossible. She died from…
  MALIKAI (CONT) – a congenital heart weakness…
  MALIKAI (CONT) – Not even the ability to travel time could change that.
  37.48.21 O’NEILL- Then why are you doing this?
  37.51.22 MALIKAI – To be with her once more.
  37.56.01 DANIEL – Malikai, the device doesn’t work. It never did.
  38.01.08 MALIKAI – It never did? You’re living proof.

  38.06.02 DANIEL (OS) – We finished translating the text of the ruins…
  DANIEL(CONT) – The ancients who built this place never got it to work…
  DANIEL(CONT) – They tried over and over again, just like you, but in the end
  they gave up. Why do you think this place has been…
  DANIEL (CONT) – deserted so long? They couldn’t save themselves.
  38.22.04 MALIKAI – You’re wrong. There must be some other explanation. I know I can make
  this work.
  38.26.15 DANIEL (OS) – You can’t…
  DANIEL (CONT) – They proved it can’t be done. You, you’re just gonna go on like
  this forever. You’ll be trapped.
  38.32.24 TEAL’C – Along with billions of innocent others.
  38.35.17 CARTER (OS) – This device…
  CARTER (CONT) – activates fourteen stargates simultaneously. That’s fourteen
  worlds re-living the same day over and over.
  38.45.25 MALIKAI – I-, uh, I didn’t realize…
  MALIKAI(CONT) – But it doesn’t…
  MALIKAI (CONT) – matter…
  MALIKAI (CONT) – Once I ’m able to input the correct…
  MALIKAI(CONT) – time coordinates the loop will be broken.

  38.59.02 O’NEILL – The people who made that machine are the same people who made the
  stargates, and they couldn’t get the damn thing to work…
  O’NEILL(CONT) – And even if you could…
  O’NEILL(CONT) – just for the sake of argument, you can’t change what happened to
  her.
  39.13.11 MALIKAI – I I can touch her face again. Talk with her…
  MALIKAI (CONT) – Hear her laugh.
  39.20.26 O’NEILL – Like you remember.
  39.22.05 MALIKAI – Yes.
  39.23.04 O’NEILL – Then what’ll happen?
  39.26.11 MALIKAI – She’ll die.
  ~ 39.27.22 O’NEILL – And then what? You start over. Listen to me. I know what it’s like.
  39.41.27 MALIKAI – You can’t!
  39.43.01 O’NEILL- I lost my son! I know! And as much as I… I could never live that over
  again. Could you?

  40.15.26 MALIKAI – No.
  40.20.21 O’NEILL – Let her go.

  ************

  The thing I love about this scene is how it brings a serious and well done dramatic conclusion with a substantive message to an episode that had previously been mostly sillyness. And it ties back in with the history of the series with the reference to O’Neil”s son. It’s brilliant really. A master stroke of writing. In the end it completes the episode turns it from mindless fun to a complete work of art that is perfectly illustrative of all that is good about SG-1.

  And hence it takes it place amongst the chosen few as one of my favorite scenes. 

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