Special Episode: Stargate SG1 Children of the Gods

SG1_101 Children of the Gods

[0:15] Welcome to Stargate SG-1 for the first time, still not a Star Trek podcast.
 My name is Jeff Aitken and I am watching Stargate SG-1 for the first time.
 And I'm Brent Allen and I'm watching Stargate SG-1 for the 47th time.
 
 [0:36] It's been a lot, Jeff. It's been a lot. But I am going to be watching the show for the first time through a new lens.
 We'll talk about that later.
 Jeff and I are two veteran Star Trek podcasters who some time ago joined forces to bring you Babylon 5 for the first time.
 And we've had so much fun doing that that we decided to do it again with a show that many of you out there have said that you wanted us to do it with.
 So whether this is your first time or your 47th time through the gate, we invite you to come along on this journey with us as we give what I'm told is a pretty great show Stargate SG-1 the for the first time treatment.
 But Brent, there is no way that doing SGFTFT can work like we did B5FTFT.
 So you my friend are the guide.
 Help me and the listeners out. Tell us how we're going to be doing Stargate SG-1 for the first time.
 
 

Explanation of how Stargate SG-1 will be approached.

[1:34] Well yeah Jeff, you are absolutely right. and Babylon 5 are incredibly different shows.
 While B5 is this beautiful five act fully formed from inception novel, Stargate isn't.
 
 [1:50] It's almost an entirely episodic series. However, it does a great job of not pressing the reset button, at the end of each episode, like the the characters grow.
 They morph. The things that happen matter and impact what happens in later episodes.
 
 [2:05] But each episode has much less in the overall narrative stakes than say an episode of Babylon 5.
 Also, as we stated earlier, this is not my first time watching the show and I wouldn't even begin to pretend that it is my first time watching the show. I love the show. I've watched the show so many times. I watched this is one of the shows I put on Jeff when I'm just trying to chill and relax, maybe go to bed like I can close my eyes and just hear it and I know exactly what's what's happening on screen like I wow it's it's I love the show so anyway that being said here's how this show Stargate for the first time is going to work each episode is going to open very similar to how we've just been doing it the way we do our Babylon five show and then right here Jeff live in the show in the podcast you and I are going to actually watch that episode together every week.
 
 

Watching the episodes together and immediate podcast discussion.

[3:01] Whoa. All right. And then instead of waiting a few days and watching the episode again, and taking some notes and scheduling a whole nother thing and coming back together, we're actually going to do the podcast part of the episode immediately following watching the show.
 
 [3:20] Now, this won't be the same way that we do it as Babylon five for the first time, because this would be like a two hour show every single week.
 So here's what we're going to do. You, my friend, this is your first time.
 You're giving us a true first-time reaction. This will be you watching the show for the very first time, your true reactions.
 
 [3:39] However, I'm not going to talk about that at all. I'm not going to have that.
 I'm going to leave that to your realm, Jeff, as the guy who is taking first time, taking us back.
 One of the great things we hear about from Babylon 5 is, if you're like, I get to relive my first watch through you, I'm going to relive my first watch, first watch along with all of our friends out there, our first watch of Stargate through you, Jeff.
 All right. So you're going to do that, but maybe I'll answer some questions.
 Maybe I'll clarify some stuff.
 However, when you're done with that part, Jeff, I am going to do a deep dive.
 Well, maybe not so deep. I'm going to do a dive, let's say, into what we'd normally have on our Babylon 5 shows, our messages segment.
 Now I'll warn you, a lot of times I think, and I'm saying this right now at the beginning, knows what happens. I might eat these words later on. I think there's probably going to be a lot of times where I'm like, yeah, there really wasn't much message in this one. It was just a fun show to watch, but I do think that there are several episodes, Jeff, it might as well just be Star Trek episodes. They're so whack you over the head with what they're trying to say. And then just like we do in Babylon five, we'll do our rating. We'll do our ranking and that's going to be the show. And Jeff, I think this one's going to be nicely, tightly packaged.
 
 [4:50] Even though we're adding in the reactions. So it's podcast and reaction video all mixed in together, all contained in one thing like you.
 This is your one stop shop for Stargate SG one for the first time.
 And like you said, you know, between us and as we're planning for the this is we're going to be in a little while talking about a two parter.
 But for our standard episodes, we're probably going to be shooting for the neighborhood of an hour for the for the entire.
 I think that's that's certainly the goal now, except for the folks at Patreon, because the folks at Patreon, as always, they get the full video, or at least that's, that's the idea, right?
 Now, Jeff, to be fair, you and I have a rule that we do as podcasting partners, we don't dictate time.
 We don't have a clock that we're like, okay, let's be done. The show takes as long as the show takes.
 But like I said, I truly anticipate a typical runtime for at least our YouTube audience, If even including the the the reaction cut up of 35 to 45 minutes.
 That's my guess.
 Like I said, I could eat those words real soon and certainly I'll eat them today because we're doing a double episode.
 All right. And this part is going to sound familiar to a lot of you because once again, this is not a Star Trek podcast, but we are bringing over from the Babylon five show the rule of three.
 This is a game where we only get 3 references to Star Trek per episode.
 
 [6:16] And if we make one of those references, you're going to hear one of everyone's favorite sounds.
 However, we can't forget Babylon 5 Jeff, because this is also not a Babylon 5 podcast, but, we are adding something new to the rule of three.
 
 [6:33] You see, any time we make a Babylon 5 reference, because I'm sure those are going to happen quite a bit, Jeff, you're going to hear this, however, those references are unlimited.
 All right, Brent, I can't wait anymore. I think we've set the table.
 I think people know how the show is going to run.
 Let's watch this episode. All right, let's do it. Here are the details for the episode.
 
 [6:58] All right, here we go. This is the pilot episode. Season one episodes.
 Technically it's episodes one and two titled children of the gods.
 The original air date for this episode was July 27th, 1997 on Showtime.
 Jeff, this was a Showtime show.
 It's a big deal. Yes. Yes. At least it's going to be a Showtime series for the first five seasons.
 The show will eventually move to another network. We'll talk about it when the time comes.
 This show, just so you know, Jeff picks up approximately one year after the events of the movie, which came out in 1994, a movie, which by the way, you still have not seen.
 I saw it in like 1994. Okay.
 
 [7:39] So basically I've not seen. How much do you remember of the movie?
 I remember some of the actors and I remember that, like they go through the circle gate and they end up in Egypt, basically.
 All right. Well, that movie was originally designed to be a trilogy by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. However, the studio MGM decided they wanted to pivot to a TV show instead, and they would bring in Brad Wright and Jonathan Glasser, names you need to become familiar with, Jeff. They're big in this world. And there was zero input from Roland Emmerich or Dean Devlin from the film. Wow. So Roland and Dean really, I think, don't like the show at all. And they, like, they keep trying to remake the other two with no nods to the show whatsoever and just do whatever they were going to originally try to do. Now, Jeff, you haven't really watched that movie yet. We'll just say, but you eventually will. We're going to get there. The movie was not really intended to this, but it now really effectively acts as the prequel to the show.
 And I don't have to tell you anything about it because they're going to tell you everything you really need to know from the show in the episode itself so, okay now one thing I do want just to clear up before we do this is everything that happened in the movie is considered actually Canon and is what happened prior to this episode starting, unless the show says otherwise.
 
 

Canon vs. Retcon: The Fluidity of Star Trek Universe

[9:03] Okay, right? It's Canon until it's not. It's Canon until they retcon it.
 Yeah, basically, which you know, it's Star Trek guys.
 Sure. That's what we do. We got that. Also important to know.
 I just want to point these two people out real quick.
 The characters of Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson who are from the movie were recast moving into the show.
 Playing Colonel O'Neill in the movie was a guy named Kurt Russell.
 You might've heard of him.
 He played him very stoic for, well, reasons. And in the show, he is now played none other than by MacGyver Richard Dean Anderson, who noted that he had a very different idea of how to play O'Neill.
 And you'll notice that Anderson's O'Neill is very different from the Kurt Douglas O'Neill, but they are still considered to be the same character.
 In the film, Dr. Daniel Jackson was played by James Spader, who was wonderful in the role, and he is now being played by relative newcomer, at least at the time, Michael Shanks.
 Shanks, I think, actually did a really good job of kind of playing the James Spader version of the character if he had lived off-world for a year.
 
 [10:08] And then as the character grew, Michael Shanks really makes Daniel Jackson very much his own.
 So with that, Jeff, that's kind of the intro to this episode.
 
 

Ready to Dive into Stargate SG-1

[10:16] If you're ready, let's jump in to Stargate SG one for the first time.
 Dude, I'm so ready. I think we need to start this episode, but before we do, if you're listening to the audio on your podcasting app on good pods, on Apple podcasts, Spotify, whatever, it's going to skip this whole part.
 We're just going to dive into the conversation after the episode.
 So if you want to catch the reaction, go catch us on YouTube and you can actually watch the reaction happen.
 Otherwise, stand by, and you'll be here for the after conversation. Chevron 7 locked.
 
 [10:51] Music.
 
 

First Impressions: Blindly entering the world of Stargate SG1

[11:06] All right, Jeff, you've just watched your first episode of Stargate SG1.
 Talk to us about it, my friend.
 What about it? So I, you know, I love that I kind of came into this completely blind.
 It's been 30 years since I saw the movie.
 
 [11:24] All I really remembered was the ring thing and that it was Egypt, you know, and so this was, this was a real first introduction to Stargate for me.
 And I think that I, I know so little about this series that I, you know, I feel like it's really similar to us watching Babylon five where we were able to avoid spoilers.
 I've avoided spoilers for so long, but I can tell you watching this, there's a whole massive world already built and it's not like, it's not like I'm leaving this episode without questions.
 Like I definitely have questions around it, but I feel totally grounded in what's going on.
 Are countless worlds out there at this point that have stargates, some of them work, some of them don't, we don't know what they are. With math, we can get to all of them. And the main through line of the story right now is we have these.
 
 

Unraveling the Symbols: The meaning behind the Stargate symbols

[12:14] Go go go out old sometimes people just call them gold you'll hear it that way as well that's easier to say i like that gold so we have these goulds and there's kind of a heart hierarchy in there where we have these gods like they even called them gods and then the children of the gods and then garbage well and then you have the jaffa who are the the incubators there are incubators and the warrior cast so to speak and they have all got the little goulds in them we saw that with with tilk. We saw that with the guy with Kowalski coming up. And so now Kowalski has a little, and the servants have the little thing on their foreheads. Yeah. So then like they got the black ones and they got the gold ones. And I couldn't tell if they was like different designs or this.
 That is, that is one of those things that they'll fix it pretty quickly in the course of the show.
 
 [13:03] But you'll like, they eventually will settle on it. Here's what those mean. And here's the black Here's what the black one means.
 Here's what the gold one means. Here's, here's where they are.
 Like they'll, they'll tell you, I could tell you if you really want to know, it's not that big of a deal, but in this show, they clearly did not actually know what those things were.
 Okay.
 Okay. But no, I think like all in all, I think that did an excellent job of handholding the new viewer through everything. And that's where like, like that, you know, Hey, they're going to figure this thing out and do it. And then you've, you've hinted at other things. Hey, this'll be, you know, in the future or whatever.
 I don't, I'm not worried about it because I just think I can, this one episode they showed what a, what a good job they do and kind of bringing you, bringing you through everything I noted, um, in our reaction piece that quite a bit of the dialogue has been, especially with, with captain Carter has really been gender, you know, gender roles and her, being treated a certain way.
 Freddy and Kowalski were just, I mean like that was horrible.
 
 [14:06] Way over the top, but like, I think that's definitely a theme that I can, I'm anticipating coming through this.
 I had questions that came up through it but a lot of them they answered like I was because I noticed that when before the Stargate opens it you know kind of spins around and it gets the the code plugged in and like one of my questions was can you use that to find your way to where this came from and and yes once you can you can kind of get it all figured out um yeah I mean a whole world built around everything I feel um galaxy really isn't it it is a galaxy right yeah I mean I think there's there's a there's a clear storyline on this it's going to be funny it's action-packed i loved and in like this tiny space we got the the the vulcan salute and we got a macgyver reference it's they're literally just like we know what we know what's up i thought this was really cool you um you did point out one thing you wanted me to remember yeah what was it and And it was when O'Neal says for crying out loud.
 Yes. So I wrote that down.
 So Jeff, you know, we like our games here for the first time.
 We do, we love them. So here's gonna be a little game we play. Okay.
 What we're gonna do is we're gonna pull certain, I can't always call them catchphrases because it's not always catchphrase. There's just certain things that tend to come up again and again and again throughout the course of the show.
 One of Jack's.
 
 [15:34] Like catch catch phrases is for crying out loud. So we're going to keep track of all the for crying out loud.
 So we here have I counted one for crying out loud and in today's episode.
 So we're going to do that. We're going to identify him and then count them.
 Okay. Yeah, there's one for Daniel. There's one for tilk. I don't know that I have one for Sam.
 I'm still yeah, like she she just like it was like anytime she talks and makes Jack's eyes glaze over but that would literally be four times an episode.
 Oh, right.
 
 [16:05] Well, I think between her and Daniel, anytime a scientist talks to him, he's just like, I don't care. What are you doing?
 And I totally get that. It'll be a fun game. That's going to be great.
 But we do have one other cool thing that we are doing with this first time watch of Stargate Brent.
 That's my first set of reactions. Okay, let me let me pause.
 So with that, I will give you a chance and you could just trust me to know what's a spoiler and what's not, but I'm not keeping spoilers as hardcore as we do in Babylon five.
 Like it, it's not that important to this show. It's not the same.
 It's not the same, but I will filter those for you. So I will give you a chance.
 Are there any questions you had things that were outstanding that maybe you didn't quite get that you would like some clarity on, like you could ask about the head thing, or you could ask whatever and I'll, I'll filter whether or not I should tell you.
 I think a lot of my questions are those little specific things, right?
 So, cause I think they did a good job of laying them out and then answering them and then just leaving the long runway in front of it, you had questions around the snake thing, but then they're like, it's a Poffus and he's there's snakes.
 
 [17:07] It is that that's not gold technology. I'm like, what is, Oh, it's the little wormy guys inside of you.
 Yeah. At this point, I don't have any massive outstanding questions that they didn't answer.
 Okay. Fair enough. I mean, I said it earlier, I was going to say it again.
 Like this was a really well-written episode that just took a brand new viewer and said, Hey, here's the basics and here's the direction we're going.
 Yeah.
 And I think like my my we love one of the games that we we love are our predictions and uh, You know my season prediction on this one is that this is going to end with him, you know that the day.
 
 [17:43] That they they opened the the gate up for daniel to come back on on abados. So that's my, Season prediction. All right, hold on to your butts folks out there jeff. You were saying I was saying that, That's it for my first watch i've seen it. It's in the books You watch this for the first time looking to see if this has any of those really good strong sci-fi messages in this one.
 So what would you find? Yeah, I mean, I said earlier that a lot of times it's just gonna be like, yeah, there really wasn't one in here.
 It was just a great episode. This was a great episode.
 This is a show, Jeff, that is not necessarily trying to be preaching.
 There will be those episodes where they do it. But this episode was, this was all about establishing the lore, establishing the characters, getting the team together, telling you what SG one is setting up the premise for the show.
 There's all these worlds we're going to go explore them, you know, and then there'll be the through line of Jack looking for, for Scarra and Daniel looking for Shara and Teal can, whatever's going to happen with him.
 And then there's Sam just being the nerd, trying to figure stuff out.
 And you got general Hammond, uh, who's in charge of the base.
 We got the gate technician guy who's like Chevron one.
 
 [18:59] You know, he's a guy like I've seen that actor. Have you? I think so. Like he's kind of one of those. Oh, I'm going to be that guy. Might wind up being your favorite character by the end of the show. Oh, really? Okay. That's the prediction, right? That's literally like what he does in the.
 
 

The Importance of Trust and Communication

[19:14] Show is like, that's his job. He sits at the computer and calls out anyway, but, but I did, I did pull something out that I thought was real interesting as I was watching this for the first time with this filter on and it's this is less a mirror to society and this isn't so much hope for a better future but it is kind of the like here's how we can be better people to each other trust your team communicate with the people around you and it was a theme that we saw throughout the course of the episode again and again and again that in the beginning when we had two characters come on who didn't trust each other. They weren't talking to each other and things didn't work out really well for them. Stuff wasn't getting done. When things began to get done was when we started trusting each other. Take for example Jack and General Hammond. When those two first meet, they are very much at odds with each other. They're not communicating, they're not telling each other the truth. Even Hammond, like remember when he steps on and he's pulling one over on Jack And he's just smiling, knowing Jack's about ready to break down because he's all fake.
 
 

Developing Rapport and Getting Things Done

[20:23] Yeah. Now, fast forward to the moment where they walk into the conference room.
 He's like, this is SCI classified. Here's what the president has done.
 We're going to do this. And Jack, you're going to lead us.
 See, as you want, and you're going to do this.
 
 [20:35] And you know what's happening now, it's getting done because for some reason, somehow they've developed a rapport.
 And they can actually make things happen. You look at it, Jack and Sam, when they for that whole opening scene, even kind of a little bit throughout there.
 There's just this Jack has no time for Sam whatsoever.
 But when he actually does give her a chance, he can do some stuff.
 She can get some stuff done. And you know what?
 She she's done every single thing that those guys have done out there.
 She's fully qualified to be there. And she has she's there, not just because she's super smart, but because she has fully earned her place on that team.
 
 [21:12] And I absolutely love that. I think Sam and Daniel, look what happened.
 Juxtapose what happened with them versus everyone else.
 When Sam and Daniel met, there was an immediate rapport, an immediate communication, an immediate like, I'm listening to you.
 I'm hearing what you got to say. I knew I would like you.
 
 [21:32] And within 3.4 seconds, they figured out the entire map room of what was going to happen and how they're going to how they're going to set up the rest of the show.
 Right. I think the final one is Tilken Jack.
 
 

The Power of Trust and Collaboration

[21:44] You know, once once they look to each other and said, help me, help me.
 I can save these people.
 When they started working together, when they started trusting each other.
 Look what happened. Look at all the people they saved. They got away from Apophis and all those guys. Things happened.
 So, you know, the best thing I think I really get out of here is people learning to trust each other, talk to each other, communicate to each other.
 That's how stuff happens.
 And that's a Star Trek message, Jeff. Yeah, total sci-fi message.
 I think that, and along with the loyalty that comes from that, you know, we saw that with Ferretti, we saw that with Kowalski, and you know, I mean, Kowalski was willing to stay on that planet forever if it meant being there for Jack, you know, and that speaks to that trust that you were talking about.
 So I think, yeah, this was a great, fun episode with a lot of action, a lot of table setting, had a great sci-fi message to Jeff.
 This would be a great episode. I would love to hear you break down on, um, uh, Starfleet Leadership Academy.
 There's a ton in this one.
 Cause I I'm even just really quick. I'm even thinking about like O'Neill and Sam's relationship and even his relationship with, uh, with Daniel.
 Cause they, they, they get, they get mired in the details and explaining the stuff.
 And he's just like, I could not possibly care less.
 
 [23:00] Can you ABC? And they're like, yes, because of X, Y, Z and blah, blah, he's like, I need ABC. Yeah, yeah.
 Yeah. I trust you. Whatever you're thinking is great. And it's just like, my God.
 Yes. Yes. That's such good stuff. There's a ton.
 There's a ton of really good stuff for Starfleet Leadership Academy in this, but this episode right here, Brent would not be a for the first time podcast if we didn't do what we love doing where we rate and rank the episode.
 So I get to rank it. I'm going to do that. It's a classic or definitive or 100% objectively correct immutable ranking. That's what I'm going to do. But you get to rate this episode on a scale of zero to five Chevrons. And I know what that means now, but zero to five Chevrons as to how strong those messages you just talked about, how strong they are in this episode.
 
 [23:53] Yes. So if I'm going to, if I'm going to rate this or, or yeah, rate this on zero to five chevrons.
 
 [24:00] I think a big piece that really goes with the messages is the intentionality of the writer.
 You know, like, is it just something that came up or is it something you really intended?
 I think what I pulled out is just something that came up. I don't know that that's really what they were aiming at at all.
 So I'm going to, I'm going to leave this one at one Chevron.
 Really like it was there.
 It was in a through, but it was real low. It was, it was in no way, shape, or form the focus or the point of the episode, you know, and I had to, I don't want to say I had to look super deep because it did feel like it was there throughout, but you're establishing relationships, people who just meet don't automatically trust each other a lot of times, unless you're two science nerds.
 So I don't know, Jeff, when you and I first met, I trusted you pretty well.
 Yeah. I think we start with a base level of trust, right? You know, we were both star Trek podcasters doing what we could do, agreeing to meet with each other, all that kind of stuff.
 Like, yeah, there's a base level of trust, but also like we didn't have people jumping through a whoosh Stargate coming to kill us and our friends and family.
 So well, Jeff, so I rank with Chevron's, you get to rate the episode and we'll leave it there.
 
 [25:08] Now, this one might be kind of tough for you, but you, you get to place this ranking, Jeff.
 Where are you ranking our pilot episode? Children of the gods.
 I'm going to, you know, really think hard on this one. make it, I could really split hairs and split this into two episodes and say which one, uh, you know, of the two Porter I like, but I'm not gonna, uh, whole thing was great.
 This is going to be our number one episode of season one so far.
 
 [25:32] All right, Jeff. Well, that's actually going to be it for children of the gods.
 That's the show right there.
 Now, next week we are watching an episode.
 I told the enemy within Jeff, do you care to venture a guess as to what episode could be. We've not talked about doing predictions, so I'll give you you can say no, and we'll just move on. Or would you would you like to give it a shot? Well, I got to. Yes, I want to give it a shot. And I have to acknowledge that you kick this whole thing off. And I know, Stargate SG one is not built as the serialized show. But what I do know from what you've shared is characters do have impacts and changes episode to episode. So the enemy within has got to be This is gonna be about Kowalski, it's gonna be the gold, the gold, gold, gold.
 That's going to take me some, the gold inside of him and, uh, whatever, whatever that, uh, you know, that, that looks like, so this is going to be a Kowalski centered episode.
 All right. Well, we will see next week right here on Stargate SG one for the first time.
 Folks, thank you so much for joining us.
 
 [26:44] Please be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave us a rating and a review.
 Please share the podcast with somebody that loves Stargate or maybe is about to fall in love with this incredible series for the very first time like our good friend Jeff over there.
 So until next time, hey, hey, Brett. Yeah, Jeff, what's up? General Mcgeneric. Oh, for crying out loud.
 
 [27:10] Music.