With all the changes that are set to happen in S9, I must say I’m having a bit of an epiphany looking back on SG-1’s previous eight seasons. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s been excellent, I have loved 99% of it and there have been times when it has risen above itself and been really quite magnificent. The production values have always been high and it has also been graced with two very charismatic actors in CJ and RDA and two quite exceptionally gifted ones in MS and AT. But looking back, its basic flaw has for me been the really frustrating lack of emotional closure. What the team has gone through over the years should have caused really profound emotional and psychological fallout [the most obvious example of this would for me be O’Neill’s ordeal in Abyss]. But the storylines have rarely touched on this apart from its Season 3/4 heyday and the odd later episode [Paradise Lost; Metamorphosis]. The loss, grief, emotional ups and downs and physical injuries incurred over the years should have had some impact but instead the characters bounce back in the next episode and it’s as if those events never happened [this is where the best examples of SG-1 fanfic have stepped in to fill the gaps and it’s really only in the fanfic that the characters have become three-dimensional].
Now, all that is fine and dandy and maybe the producers never actually intended SG-1 to be anything more than a children’s genre series – but surely they would have wanted it to be more than that [and certainly some of the darker plotlines suggest that they were trying to be more than that]. I feel very strongly that made the X-Files and Buffy into so much more than genre series was their ability to transcend those boundaries and investigate loss, love, failure, whatever. So looking back I think SG-1 is sort of a dog that didn’t bark: so much potential to be more than what it has turned out to be. I still love it and will defend it to anyone who dismisses it as cult TV rubbish – but I will always wonder how much better it could have been! Anyway I’d be really interested to know what people think and I hope I don’t get flamed!
Now, all that is fine and dandy and maybe the producers never actually intended SG-1 to be anything more than a children’s genre series – but surely they would have wanted it to be more than that [and certainly some of the darker plotlines suggest that they were trying to be more than that]. I feel very strongly that made the X-Files and Buffy into so much more than genre series was their ability to transcend those boundaries and investigate loss, love, failure, whatever. So looking back I think SG-1 is sort of a dog that didn’t bark: so much potential to be more than what it has turned out to be. I still love it and will defend it to anyone who dismisses it as cult TV rubbish – but I will always wonder how much better it could have been! Anyway I’d be really interested to know what people think and I hope I don’t get flamed!
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