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I am weak. This is for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2)
stephl, and any other folk who might be coming over to the Stargate side of the force due to Casting Spoiler. It is otherwise spoiler-free beyond Endgame, Episode 8x10.
If I made any mistakes, I'm sure someone will let me know. Most of this was off the top of my head.
A Stargate Primer for the Farscape Fan
**
Once upon a time there was this race called the Ancients, who created a system of wormholes used to travel all over the galaxy. Much much later, there was a man named John, who traveled through these wormholes and in the course of that travel got the knowledge of the Ancients downloaded into his head…
Stop me when this starts to sound familiar.
**
(Well, he goes by Jack, actually. But still.)
**
Once upon a time, some archeologists dug up a big round thing in Giza with a coverstone on top. In retrospect, this was probably something of a bad move. However, as is often true of bad moves, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
**
The big round thing came into the possession of the Air Force and lay dormant (this is a lie, but don't worry about it) until the 1990s, when the daughter of the man who discovered it managed to get a program going to try to make the thing work. See, the coverstone had hieroglyphics on it, and the hieroglyphics indicated that the big round thing—which was, so far as their experts in ancient Egyptian could tell, called the Gate to Heaven—was actually something that would, you know, do something. Something interesting.
If you're thinking "give me a break" at this point, please note that the historical Star Gate project involved the use of psychics. At least the Gate was a machine of some kind.
Unfortunately, the Gate itself didn't have any hieroglyphics on it—just a collection of unidentifiable symbols. So the project went in search of someone who could figure out how to read the symbols.
**
Once upon a time, there was a man who had been orphaned at a young age when his parents were crushed by a museum exhibit right in front of him…
No, really.
I'm very sorry to say that this complete lack of self-preservation instincts appears to be genetic, though perhaps in compensation for squishing his parents, the universe has never quite had the heart to make the consequences of his behavior stick.
**
So anyway, all-grown-up Daniel Jackson—proud owner of a theory of cross-cultural interaction that either included or was accused of including (the canon is somewhat unclear) the argument that the Great Pyramid was a landing pad for alien spaceships—was out of a job, out of an apartment, out of… well, he was just out.
(Not that way. We'll talk about that end of the fandom later.)
Catherine—you remember her, she's the daughter referenced above—shows up as he's being ejected from a conference, and offers him a job working on the translation of the Gate. Well, she doesn't tell him about the Gate just yet, but the translation part, yes.
It's Daniel who changed the translation from "Gate of Heaven" to "Stargate," thus giving us a title. Eventually, he figures out that the problematic symbols represent constellations, and…
…look, thinking too hard about how the Gate system works will drive you crazy. Y'all are Farscape fans, right? Handwave. You should be good at it by now.
**
They dial the Gate, and a wormhole forms (or, as memorably described later on, it kind of "flushes sideways").
In retrospect, this was also probably something of a bad move. It's a good thing they're pretty, really.
**
Once upon a time, there was a Colonel in the Air Force, a member of special forces, who had done some damn distasteful things. He came home one day and met his wife on the porch. As they talked, they heard their only child, their son Charlie, shoot himself dead with said Colonel's weapon.
So when the Air Force needed someone to go on a potential suicide mission to the other side of the galaxy, they figured they knew just who to call.
**
Jack O'Neill knew what he was getting into when he agreed to go through the Stargate with a nuclear bomb in tow. Daniel Jackson, not so much—but Daniel was the one who assured them all that he'd be able to work out the address to get them home, and that wasn't strictly true, so maybe he deserved what he got.
**
Okay, actually, we do have to talk about the Stargate system a little. There are these big rings, made of a material called naquadah, which is fairly rare and is not found in Earth's solar system. They're placed on various planets, and work basically like a telephone; dial seven symbols, and your Stargate will connect with whichever other Stargate you just dialed. A wormhole is formed between the two Gates; step in one end, step out the other a few seconds later.
Most of the Stargates are located outside, in fields or forests that bear a striking resemblance to the landscape around Vancouver, BC. Personally, I'd put a roof on that puppy if I were going to use it very often, but then that's me.
The Earth version is buried in Cheyenne Mountain, on Level 28. There is a big yellow-and-black hazard marking on the floor surrounding it (since when it opens, there's something of a wormhole spillover, and if you happen to be in the wormhole's way you get disintegrated). That hazard marking makes me snicker every time I see it. Man, OSHA would have a field day with these people.
**
So Jack and Daniel and some other soldiers go through the Gate to see what's there. They find a planet called Abydos and an Egypt-derived civilization, which is enslaved by an alien who calls himself Ra. They inspire a revolt, and rather than blowing up the Gate as he was instructed to do in the case of any possible threat being on the other side, Jack and Daniel teleport the bomb up to Ra's mothership and blow him up.
In the course of these adventures, Daniel gets married (he doesn't notice at the time) and killed (that one he does notice; he gets better, though). Also he gives Jack a metaphorical slap upside the head, which in concert with the hero-worship of a teenage Abydonian boy named Skaara makes Jack decide that maybe he's not so suicidal anymore after all. Jack goes back to Earth to lie about whether or not he blew up the Gate; Daniel stays on Abydos with his wife, Sha're, and buries the Gate so that nothing can come through it.
That actually was a good move. Shame he dug it up again before the year was out.
**
The movie Stargate ends with Jack's return to Earth. There are some canonical inconsistencies between the movie and the TV show; generally the fandom resolves these in the show's favor. If you start reading the fic and see the name Sha'uri, roll with it; that's how Daniel's wife's name was spelled in the movie. (Actually, if you see a name that vaguely resembles Sha're, feel free to assume they're talking about Daniel's wife. Stargate is big into apostrophes, and the results aren't always pretty.)
Also, in the movie Jack and Daniel are played by Kurt Russell and James Spader. In the TV show, it's Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks instead. Please to picture the TV show actors when reading fic, particularly when it comes to Jack. (With Daniel, the main thing to keep in mind is that show-era Daniel is not blond. No, really, he isn't.)
**
Once upon a time, there was a studio that owned the rights to this property called Stargate. "I think we can make a weekly TV series out of this!" quoth the studio. "But we should have a headliner. I know! We'll hire McGyver!"
RDA agreed to come onboard as Jack only if Jack got to have a sense of humor. This was definitely a good move. And really, if you're having lingering McGyver issues… well, give him a fair shake anyway. His hair's much better now.
**
After the Abydos mission, the government was under the impression that the Stargate could only go to one place and that place was now inaccessible, so the program was being shut down. Jack retired again, and was divorced by his wife. The Stargate sat in the basement of Cheyenne Mountain, covered with a tarp and guarded by a few apathetic soldiers.
Then the Earth Gate opened, and Apophis came through. For the purposes of the TV show, Ra is no longer a singular being, but one of many goa'uld (I warned you about the apostrophes). The goa'uld are smallish snakelike symbiotes; they crawl inside a host (usually but not necessarily human) and take over the host's body, leaving the host's consciousness more or less intact but helpless. They tend toward the stupid and megalomaniacal, and because they have the biggest guns, at the start of the show they pretty much rule the galaxy.
They impersonate gods (usually drawn from Earth mythology, or, rather, inspiring Earth mythology) and maintain their power through the use of armies of Jaffa, genetically altered humans who carry immature goa'uld symbiotes in a pouch. The Jaffa are not hosts, but their natural immune system is destroyed by their symbiotes, which give them good health, long life, and increased strength and vitality. If their symbiote is removed, they die—certainly within days, often within hours.
Apophis is a System Lord, one of the goa'uld elite. He comes through to Earth as part of a series of visits to various planets, looking for pretty people to become hosts. He takes the female apathetic soldier with him and disappears back through the Gate.
The Air Force is somewhat nonplussed at this turn of events, and starts to wonder if perhaps Jack wasn't entirely truthful about this whole "blew up the Gate" thing.
By the end of the two-hour pilot, Jack's gone back to Abydos with Captain Sam Carter (designated science geek and designated girl), met Daniel, been told by Daniel that no, the Gate goes to a whole bunch of places, and had Sha're and Skaara stolen by Apophis. Jack, Daniel, and Sam go after them, and see them taken as hosts. They themselves survive only because Apophis' right-hand Jaffa, Teal'c, chooses the order to execute a room-full of prisoners as the straw that broke the camel's back, and helps them escape instead.
"Huh," says the Air Force, "so, lots of baddies out there, perhaps seeing us as a threat. Why did we make this thing work again?"
In an attempt to get Earth up to a technological level where it can protect itself from the goa'uld, several exploration teams are formed and sent out to various planets looking for allies and technology. Jack, Daniel, Sam, and Teal'c make up the premier team, which is known as SG-1. They fight crime. (Well, no, not really. They do save the world on a regular basis, though. Sometimes they weren't even the ones who put it in danger in the first place.)
**
Stargate SG-1 is more episodic than arc-driven, though there are plot arcs and even the occasional character arc.
(I'm just taking a break here to let you all get over your flashbacks to the cancellation… okay, I'm done.)
What this means is that, in general, you can jump in anywhere and not be completely lost. Sci-Fi plays Stargate all the time. 6-11 on Mondays, 6-7 Tuesday through Thursday, 6-7 and 8-10 (I think?) on Fridays. They're currently showing seasons 1-6 and 8; season 7 is in regular syndication on network TV. Season 8 is in its 'summer' hiatus and will start up again with new episodes on January 21st.
**
What you need to know about the regular characters:
Jack O'Neill: Air Force Colonel until the second episode of S8, when he was promoted to Brigadier General. In charge of SG-1 until S8; he's now in charge of the whole facility. As described above, Jack's son killed himself with Jack's weapon (presumably unintentionally; he was maybe eight at the time). This is how he ended up going to Abydos in the first place, and it all snowballed from there. Jack is usually, though not always, the voice of military and political expedience, and he has a seriously off-kilter sense of humor, which tends toward the sarcastic. He is not interested in academic issues, though there are indications that he is a closet geek, and he likes to play stupid. (The actor/producer, unfortunately, thinks the playing stupid is rather funnier than it is, but the other writers throw in a "he's just playing a role!" offset once or twice a season to try to balance it out.) He loves his team. No, more than that.
You must love Jack. It's a rule.
Daniel Jackson: Poor wee orphan child who needs to be cuddled. Well, okay, he's not wee—he's over six feet and, as someone once memorably described him to me, "looks like he could crack hazelnuts with his bare hands." Also he's much too prickly to cuddle. But he is genuinely an orphan—the fic's got that part right. Trained as an archeologist, Daniel is a genius linguist; as of the second season he spoke twenty-three languages, and has canonically picked up at least a couple more since then. He tends to be the voice of Ethical and Cultural Concerns and so on, unless he doesn't feel like it. (Daniel is an idealist, and thus dangerous when he wants to be.) He's become more military-thinking over the years, though.
He originally joined SG-1 in order to search for his wife; after her death, he stayed on because, well, he wanted to, but in what was one of the most coherent (if not necessarily intentional) character arcs of the show, flailed around getting more and more stressed about things until he finally managed to die heroically. (When I say "flailed," I mean on Stargate-level. Do not expect Crichtonesque craziness.) Well, I say "he died" when what actually happened was "he ascended to another plane of existence" or, more amusingly and just as accurately, "he turned into a giant glowy squid creature." He got better after his actor had a season off, though.
Sam Carter: Sam starts off the show as a Air Force Captain; she's had two promotions since then, and is now a Lieutenant Colonel and the leader of SG-1. Though she is a pilot (and apparently flew in Desert Storm) most of her background is technical; she is a genius astrophysicist, and also fills in with other sciences when the plot demands. (In practice, we usually see Sam working as an engineer.) Sam's a smart cookie, and a good soldier, and isn't ashamed of either of those things, which is a lot of why I like her. She does have an unfortunate habit of becoming romantically involved with inappropriate men who later die. We don't think she's actually a serial killer, but you never know. The show isn't over yet. Also, she blew up a sun once.
Sam and Jack are canonically attracted to each other, but have not pursued any romantic relationship because Air Force regulations forbid it. Also they're easily distracted from their angst by shiny objects.
Teal'c: Teal'c was the First Prime of Apophis—basically, his head general. He figured out eventually that Apophis wasn't a god, but stayed on as his right-hand-man because of the whole symbiote issue, attempting to mitigate Apophis' evil. Upon meeting Jack and seeing that he had non-goa'uld advanced technology, Teal'c turned on Apophis and joined the SGC (Stargate Command) instead.
Teal'c fills the Klingon role on SG-1—formal diction, warrior culture, yada yada—though he's developed a real fondness for trashy Earth culture. His plotlines tend to revolve around Freedom For The Jaffa, which is the cause Teal'c's dedicated his post-Apophis life to. Teal'c also abandoned a wife and son when he left Apophis' service; the son's fine now, the wife's dead.
Teal'c personally selected Sha're to become a host, and also personally shot her dead a couple of years later when he had to choose between her survival and Daniel's. This is not as much of an issue between him and Daniel as one might think.
George Hammond: General Hammond is the commander of the SGC facility from seasons 1-7. If SG-1 were a cop show, he would be the police chief who lets the main characters get away with murder.
Jonas Quinn: Jonas was the fourth member of SG-1 during the sixth season, when Daniel was dead. He was actually involved in the incident that led to Daniel's death, and joined SG-1 as a way to try to continue Daniel's work. After Daniel's return, he went back to his own planet. Poor Jonas; it really wasn't his fault that the writers didn't do a very good job of making him someone other than not-Daniel.
Ironically, the character with whom he had the best chemistry—by miles—was Daniel. Whoops.
**
The story so far:
You know, I was going to try to do that, and then I realized... why? Or anyway, why do a detailed version. The non-detailed version goes something like this: The goa'uld want to wipe out Earth. They've been prevented from doing this. Earth has developed interstellar spaceflight, and maintains offworld bases, and has alien allies. While all this was happening, SG-1 destroyed several goa'uld, but it was somewhat like playing whack-a-mole, and new goa'uld keep rising up to take a run at Earth. (Convenient, that.)
Really, that's pretty much all you need to know. You can fill in the details later.
**
What you need to know about the rest of the galaxy:
The goa'uld are the bad guys. We talked about them already—parasitic, megalomaniacal, etc. They also have very bad clothes sense, and have never read the Evil Overlord list. They fly around space in giant pyramids that are all gold on the inside, because if you were a megalomaniacal parasite, wouldn't you?
The Jaffa are the goa'uld's power base, tied to goa'uld service by their need for immature symbiotes. Teal'c and the SGC have, over time, pulled some Jaffa away from their gods, and they (catchily titled "The Rebel Jaffa") are either living independently while working to recruit more Jaffa to their cause or operating as a fifth column within goa'uld armies. In S6, a chemical called tretonin was developed; it can serve as an alternative to the symbiotes, and several (though by no means all) Jaffa now take this drug.
The Tok'ra are goa'uld who decided maybe this whole taking-hosts-by-force idea was kind of, you know, immoral, and now they don't do it anymore, except when they do. There aren't very many of them; they basically work by subversion, trying to weaken the goa'uld. One of them took over Sam in an attempt to escape a goa'uld assassin ("except when they do") and later died, but left her with enough knowledge for the SGC to be able to find the other Tok'ra. Sam's father, who was a General in the Air Force and who was at that time dying of cancer, was cured when he agreed to take a Tok'ra symbiote. The SGC and the Tok'ra are basically allies, though there's been something of a breakdown in that recently.
The Asgard are Roswell-esque little grey men, who are generally benevolent protectors of humanity. They had (and possibly still have, though the political situation is complicated) a treaty with the goa'uld, wherein the goa'uld left certain human-occupied worlds alone or else the Asgard would crush them. The Asgard are considerably more technologically advanced than the goa'uld, but have problems of their own back in their home galaxy, and could not actually come into the Milky Way in order to engage in any sort of large-scale campaign against the goa'uld. They impersonate Norse gods, and their leader, Thor, has a crush on Jack. Seriously. (Well, not canonically by a strict definition of canon, but dude, he named the flagship of the Asgard fleet after the guy.)
The Replicators are machine lifeforms, which have been attempting on-and-off to destroy the Asgard for quite a while, with some success. They assimilate technology in a way that is totally stolen from the Borg. (Stargate is not shy about borrowing from other franchises.) They were originally little bug-shaped creatures, but are now human-form.
The NID--which stands for something, but hell if I remember what at this point, National Intelligence Directory or something--are a governmental organization with, um, look, it's all kind of unclear. They're the Internal Adversaries. Supposedly they've been cleaned out recently, but up until the sixth season they were increasingly troublesome, undermining interstellar treaties and stealing alien technology and so on.
The big grey ring is the Stargate. Seven symbols for a gate within our galaxy; eight for one in another galaxy, but that requires a lot more power and is usually impossible. The Earth gate has an iris installed that can close in such a way that anything coming through the wormhole is unable to reintegrate, and instead is left in a smear of atoms on the iris. (Ew.) The Stargate can and has malfunctioned in various plot-inducing ways, though really it's pretty stable for a piece of alien technology that no one really understands. You can only travel one way through a wormhole, unless you're certain forms of energy (most conveniently, a radio wave).
The phallic guns are zatnikatels, called "zats." They're goa'uld technology, though now utilized by the SGC as well. One shot stuns (and causes a great deal of pain), two kills, three disintegrates. This is very helpful for post-battle cleanup.
**
What you need to know about the fandom:
The Stargate fandom is arranged basically into two camps, based on their differing answer to the question "who does Jack share his tent with when he sleeps offworld?" (The best part is that the tents may or may not be canonical. I think there was one in an S1 episode, but if so, we've never seen it since. But you'd never know it to read the fic.)
Anyway, the two big ships are Sam/Jack and Jack/Daniel. (We do not do portmanteaus in Stargate fandom, thankfully.) Inter-ship warfare can be ugly at times, though I've pretty successfully avoided it because I experience the fandom mostly through LJ. Stargate went through a Grand Hullabaloo back in S5, when Michael Shanks declined to renew his contract and left the show. This was the last straw for some of the Daniel fans who'd already been unhappy about the show's tilt toward S/J (they did a big push in that direction in S4, later backed off from) and what they saw as the reduced importance of the relationship between Jack and Daniel, and they got very upset. For whatever reason—and yes, as you can imagine the reasons for MS' departure and his return have been picked over exhaustively, but I've decided I don't care—MS decided to come back for the seventh season, which was at that point assumed to be the last. (So was the sixth season. And the eighth. I fully expect to be watching these people in wheelchairs.) At the same time, RDA's time commitment to the show went down considerably; as of S8, he was living in LA and commuting up to Vancouver to shoot something like one week out of every month.
Central fic archives are Heliopolis (gen and non-explicit het), Heliopolis 2 (explicit het) and Area 52 (slash). The first rec page I usually point people to isdestina's, here, but that's mostly slash with some gen. I don't know the S/J end of things very well, but I know nandamai has a recs page here, and I like her S/J so it seems likely her recs are worth looking at. sathinks also volunteered her Stargate SG-1 recs below, and SA's got good taste, so they're worth a look
I'm not going to try to point you to any mailing lists or forums, because frankly they scare me. Try Gateworld for all of your Stargate information needs, including summaries of and pictures from all previous episodes, but beware—the front page is often spoilery. Arduinna's Stargate SG-1 Handbook is a treasure trove of random information about things like What Medals Does Jack Have, According To His Uniform? Icons can be found at![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.2)
stargate_icons, and episode reviews and other show discussion are linked to on metagate. Other Stargate communities I’m in myself are sg1_beyond_otp, devoted to threesomes and more, sg_infinite, devoted to Stargate AUs, and stargate100, the fandom's drabble community.
We like new blood, really. Just ask a Stargate-related question, and we will fling ourselves upon you with abandon. Or anyway, that's been my experience.
**
Completely Subjective Recommended Episodes (I'll do three per season):
Children of the Gods, the two-hour pilot--because, you know, backstory.
S1: Tin Man, There But For the Grace of God (as a bonus, this episode is from a story by David Kemper), Within the Serpent's Grasp. (There's a clip show called Politics between the last two that's a useful primer for S1, but, well, it's a clip show. You should be able to figure out how you got from Grace of God to Serpent's Grasp without too much trouble.)
S2: The Serpent's Lair, Thor's Chariot, The Fifth Race
S3: Forever in a Day, Maternal Instinct, Nemesis
S4: Small Victories, Window of Opportunity, 2010
S5: Beast of Burden, Menace, Meridian
S6: Abyss, Paradise Lost, Full Circle
S7: Fragile Balance, Heroes, Lost City (both of those last two are two-parters, but, well, this is my post and I get to make the rules)
S8 (so far): New Order (another two-parter), Zero Hour, and Endgame (just for the ending)
Also, they did Lowdowns before S7 and S8, and I could swear I remember that they're doing another one before the second half of S8, so keep an eye out.
**
Farscape vs. Stargate
Okay, here's the thing. If you're coming over to Stargate for the Ben Browder, you need to know, Stargate does not do the kind of character arcing and long-term impacts that Farscape did. It's an episodic action-adventure show. Jack O'Neill once spent several days being repeatedly tortured to death and revived; the impact of this has been some added snarkiness towards the Tok'ra (whose fault it indirectly was) and a couple of veiled comments on his part to the adversary who did it. Stargate is also not usually a very ambitious show. Farscape aimed high; when it hit it really hit, and when it missed, it missed spectacularly. Stargate hums along smoothly, telling its stories; it's not a show that usually bowls me over with its brilliance or riskiness, because that's not the kind of show that it's usually trying to be.
That said, it is a very likable show. SG does have some sense of history; it does do plot arcs, and its characters do change over time, though that's not really what the show is about; and it's turned out seven and a half years of pretty solid television. I love it the way it is, and I'm pretty excited to see how they work BB's character into it, if a little nervous about what we're going to lose from the show in order to get him. I'm also pretty excited that maybe new, smart, interesting people are going to get into the show and say smart, interesting things about it, and write fic, and all the other good things that come with an influx into the fandom.
But please, don't expect it to be Farscape. It's really, really not.
For one thing, there's no vomit.
**
Oh, and one more thing: Daniel was right about the pyramids. He usually is, when it comes to that kind of stuff.
stephl, and any other folk who might be coming over to the Stargate side of the force due to Casting Spoiler. It is otherwise spoiler-free beyond Endgame, Episode 8x10.If I made any mistakes, I'm sure someone will let me know. Most of this was off the top of my head.
A Stargate Primer for the Farscape Fan
**
Once upon a time there was this race called the Ancients, who created a system of wormholes used to travel all over the galaxy. Much much later, there was a man named John, who traveled through these wormholes and in the course of that travel got the knowledge of the Ancients downloaded into his head…
Stop me when this starts to sound familiar.
**
(Well, he goes by Jack, actually. But still.)
**
Once upon a time, some archeologists dug up a big round thing in Giza with a coverstone on top. In retrospect, this was probably something of a bad move. However, as is often true of bad moves, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
**
The big round thing came into the possession of the Air Force and lay dormant (this is a lie, but don't worry about it) until the 1990s, when the daughter of the man who discovered it managed to get a program going to try to make the thing work. See, the coverstone had hieroglyphics on it, and the hieroglyphics indicated that the big round thing—which was, so far as their experts in ancient Egyptian could tell, called the Gate to Heaven—was actually something that would, you know, do something. Something interesting.
If you're thinking "give me a break" at this point, please note that the historical Star Gate project involved the use of psychics. At least the Gate was a machine of some kind.
Unfortunately, the Gate itself didn't have any hieroglyphics on it—just a collection of unidentifiable symbols. So the project went in search of someone who could figure out how to read the symbols.
**
Once upon a time, there was a man who had been orphaned at a young age when his parents were crushed by a museum exhibit right in front of him…
No, really.
I'm very sorry to say that this complete lack of self-preservation instincts appears to be genetic, though perhaps in compensation for squishing his parents, the universe has never quite had the heart to make the consequences of his behavior stick.
**
So anyway, all-grown-up Daniel Jackson—proud owner of a theory of cross-cultural interaction that either included or was accused of including (the canon is somewhat unclear) the argument that the Great Pyramid was a landing pad for alien spaceships—was out of a job, out of an apartment, out of… well, he was just out.
(Not that way. We'll talk about that end of the fandom later.)
Catherine—you remember her, she's the daughter referenced above—shows up as he's being ejected from a conference, and offers him a job working on the translation of the Gate. Well, she doesn't tell him about the Gate just yet, but the translation part, yes.
It's Daniel who changed the translation from "Gate of Heaven" to "Stargate," thus giving us a title. Eventually, he figures out that the problematic symbols represent constellations, and…
…look, thinking too hard about how the Gate system works will drive you crazy. Y'all are Farscape fans, right? Handwave. You should be good at it by now.
**
They dial the Gate, and a wormhole forms (or, as memorably described later on, it kind of "flushes sideways").
In retrospect, this was also probably something of a bad move. It's a good thing they're pretty, really.
**
Once upon a time, there was a Colonel in the Air Force, a member of special forces, who had done some damn distasteful things. He came home one day and met his wife on the porch. As they talked, they heard their only child, their son Charlie, shoot himself dead with said Colonel's weapon.
So when the Air Force needed someone to go on a potential suicide mission to the other side of the galaxy, they figured they knew just who to call.
**
Jack O'Neill knew what he was getting into when he agreed to go through the Stargate with a nuclear bomb in tow. Daniel Jackson, not so much—but Daniel was the one who assured them all that he'd be able to work out the address to get them home, and that wasn't strictly true, so maybe he deserved what he got.
**
Okay, actually, we do have to talk about the Stargate system a little. There are these big rings, made of a material called naquadah, which is fairly rare and is not found in Earth's solar system. They're placed on various planets, and work basically like a telephone; dial seven symbols, and your Stargate will connect with whichever other Stargate you just dialed. A wormhole is formed between the two Gates; step in one end, step out the other a few seconds later.
Most of the Stargates are located outside, in fields or forests that bear a striking resemblance to the landscape around Vancouver, BC. Personally, I'd put a roof on that puppy if I were going to use it very often, but then that's me.
The Earth version is buried in Cheyenne Mountain, on Level 28. There is a big yellow-and-black hazard marking on the floor surrounding it (since when it opens, there's something of a wormhole spillover, and if you happen to be in the wormhole's way you get disintegrated). That hazard marking makes me snicker every time I see it. Man, OSHA would have a field day with these people.
**
So Jack and Daniel and some other soldiers go through the Gate to see what's there. They find a planet called Abydos and an Egypt-derived civilization, which is enslaved by an alien who calls himself Ra. They inspire a revolt, and rather than blowing up the Gate as he was instructed to do in the case of any possible threat being on the other side, Jack and Daniel teleport the bomb up to Ra's mothership and blow him up.
In the course of these adventures, Daniel gets married (he doesn't notice at the time) and killed (that one he does notice; he gets better, though). Also he gives Jack a metaphorical slap upside the head, which in concert with the hero-worship of a teenage Abydonian boy named Skaara makes Jack decide that maybe he's not so suicidal anymore after all. Jack goes back to Earth to lie about whether or not he blew up the Gate; Daniel stays on Abydos with his wife, Sha're, and buries the Gate so that nothing can come through it.
That actually was a good move. Shame he dug it up again before the year was out.
**
The movie Stargate ends with Jack's return to Earth. There are some canonical inconsistencies between the movie and the TV show; generally the fandom resolves these in the show's favor. If you start reading the fic and see the name Sha'uri, roll with it; that's how Daniel's wife's name was spelled in the movie. (Actually, if you see a name that vaguely resembles Sha're, feel free to assume they're talking about Daniel's wife. Stargate is big into apostrophes, and the results aren't always pretty.)
Also, in the movie Jack and Daniel are played by Kurt Russell and James Spader. In the TV show, it's Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks instead. Please to picture the TV show actors when reading fic, particularly when it comes to Jack. (With Daniel, the main thing to keep in mind is that show-era Daniel is not blond. No, really, he isn't.)
**
Once upon a time, there was a studio that owned the rights to this property called Stargate. "I think we can make a weekly TV series out of this!" quoth the studio. "But we should have a headliner. I know! We'll hire McGyver!"
RDA agreed to come onboard as Jack only if Jack got to have a sense of humor. This was definitely a good move. And really, if you're having lingering McGyver issues… well, give him a fair shake anyway. His hair's much better now.
**
After the Abydos mission, the government was under the impression that the Stargate could only go to one place and that place was now inaccessible, so the program was being shut down. Jack retired again, and was divorced by his wife. The Stargate sat in the basement of Cheyenne Mountain, covered with a tarp and guarded by a few apathetic soldiers.
Then the Earth Gate opened, and Apophis came through. For the purposes of the TV show, Ra is no longer a singular being, but one of many goa'uld (I warned you about the apostrophes). The goa'uld are smallish snakelike symbiotes; they crawl inside a host (usually but not necessarily human) and take over the host's body, leaving the host's consciousness more or less intact but helpless. They tend toward the stupid and megalomaniacal, and because they have the biggest guns, at the start of the show they pretty much rule the galaxy.
They impersonate gods (usually drawn from Earth mythology, or, rather, inspiring Earth mythology) and maintain their power through the use of armies of Jaffa, genetically altered humans who carry immature goa'uld symbiotes in a pouch. The Jaffa are not hosts, but their natural immune system is destroyed by their symbiotes, which give them good health, long life, and increased strength and vitality. If their symbiote is removed, they die—certainly within days, often within hours.
Apophis is a System Lord, one of the goa'uld elite. He comes through to Earth as part of a series of visits to various planets, looking for pretty people to become hosts. He takes the female apathetic soldier with him and disappears back through the Gate.
The Air Force is somewhat nonplussed at this turn of events, and starts to wonder if perhaps Jack wasn't entirely truthful about this whole "blew up the Gate" thing.
By the end of the two-hour pilot, Jack's gone back to Abydos with Captain Sam Carter (designated science geek and designated girl), met Daniel, been told by Daniel that no, the Gate goes to a whole bunch of places, and had Sha're and Skaara stolen by Apophis. Jack, Daniel, and Sam go after them, and see them taken as hosts. They themselves survive only because Apophis' right-hand Jaffa, Teal'c, chooses the order to execute a room-full of prisoners as the straw that broke the camel's back, and helps them escape instead.
"Huh," says the Air Force, "so, lots of baddies out there, perhaps seeing us as a threat. Why did we make this thing work again?"
In an attempt to get Earth up to a technological level where it can protect itself from the goa'uld, several exploration teams are formed and sent out to various planets looking for allies and technology. Jack, Daniel, Sam, and Teal'c make up the premier team, which is known as SG-1. They fight crime. (Well, no, not really. They do save the world on a regular basis, though. Sometimes they weren't even the ones who put it in danger in the first place.)
**
Stargate SG-1 is more episodic than arc-driven, though there are plot arcs and even the occasional character arc.
(I'm just taking a break here to let you all get over your flashbacks to the cancellation… okay, I'm done.)
What this means is that, in general, you can jump in anywhere and not be completely lost. Sci-Fi plays Stargate all the time. 6-11 on Mondays, 6-7 Tuesday through Thursday, 6-7 and 8-10 (I think?) on Fridays. They're currently showing seasons 1-6 and 8; season 7 is in regular syndication on network TV. Season 8 is in its 'summer' hiatus and will start up again with new episodes on January 21st.
**
What you need to know about the regular characters:
Jack O'Neill: Air Force Colonel until the second episode of S8, when he was promoted to Brigadier General. In charge of SG-1 until S8; he's now in charge of the whole facility. As described above, Jack's son killed himself with Jack's weapon (presumably unintentionally; he was maybe eight at the time). This is how he ended up going to Abydos in the first place, and it all snowballed from there. Jack is usually, though not always, the voice of military and political expedience, and he has a seriously off-kilter sense of humor, which tends toward the sarcastic. He is not interested in academic issues, though there are indications that he is a closet geek, and he likes to play stupid. (The actor/producer, unfortunately, thinks the playing stupid is rather funnier than it is, but the other writers throw in a "he's just playing a role!" offset once or twice a season to try to balance it out.) He loves his team. No, more than that.
You must love Jack. It's a rule.
Daniel Jackson: Poor wee orphan child who needs to be cuddled. Well, okay, he's not wee—he's over six feet and, as someone once memorably described him to me, "looks like he could crack hazelnuts with his bare hands." Also he's much too prickly to cuddle. But he is genuinely an orphan—the fic's got that part right. Trained as an archeologist, Daniel is a genius linguist; as of the second season he spoke twenty-three languages, and has canonically picked up at least a couple more since then. He tends to be the voice of Ethical and Cultural Concerns and so on, unless he doesn't feel like it. (Daniel is an idealist, and thus dangerous when he wants to be.) He's become more military-thinking over the years, though.
He originally joined SG-1 in order to search for his wife; after her death, he stayed on because, well, he wanted to, but in what was one of the most coherent (if not necessarily intentional) character arcs of the show, flailed around getting more and more stressed about things until he finally managed to die heroically. (When I say "flailed," I mean on Stargate-level. Do not expect Crichtonesque craziness.) Well, I say "he died" when what actually happened was "he ascended to another plane of existence" or, more amusingly and just as accurately, "he turned into a giant glowy squid creature." He got better after his actor had a season off, though.
Sam Carter: Sam starts off the show as a Air Force Captain; she's had two promotions since then, and is now a Lieutenant Colonel and the leader of SG-1. Though she is a pilot (and apparently flew in Desert Storm) most of her background is technical; she is a genius astrophysicist, and also fills in with other sciences when the plot demands. (In practice, we usually see Sam working as an engineer.) Sam's a smart cookie, and a good soldier, and isn't ashamed of either of those things, which is a lot of why I like her. She does have an unfortunate habit of becoming romantically involved with inappropriate men who later die. We don't think she's actually a serial killer, but you never know. The show isn't over yet. Also, she blew up a sun once.
Sam and Jack are canonically attracted to each other, but have not pursued any romantic relationship because Air Force regulations forbid it. Also they're easily distracted from their angst by shiny objects.
Teal'c: Teal'c was the First Prime of Apophis—basically, his head general. He figured out eventually that Apophis wasn't a god, but stayed on as his right-hand-man because of the whole symbiote issue, attempting to mitigate Apophis' evil. Upon meeting Jack and seeing that he had non-goa'uld advanced technology, Teal'c turned on Apophis and joined the SGC (Stargate Command) instead.
Teal'c fills the Klingon role on SG-1—formal diction, warrior culture, yada yada—though he's developed a real fondness for trashy Earth culture. His plotlines tend to revolve around Freedom For The Jaffa, which is the cause Teal'c's dedicated his post-Apophis life to. Teal'c also abandoned a wife and son when he left Apophis' service; the son's fine now, the wife's dead.
Teal'c personally selected Sha're to become a host, and also personally shot her dead a couple of years later when he had to choose between her survival and Daniel's. This is not as much of an issue between him and Daniel as one might think.
George Hammond: General Hammond is the commander of the SGC facility from seasons 1-7. If SG-1 were a cop show, he would be the police chief who lets the main characters get away with murder.
Jonas Quinn: Jonas was the fourth member of SG-1 during the sixth season, when Daniel was dead. He was actually involved in the incident that led to Daniel's death, and joined SG-1 as a way to try to continue Daniel's work. After Daniel's return, he went back to his own planet. Poor Jonas; it really wasn't his fault that the writers didn't do a very good job of making him someone other than not-Daniel.
Ironically, the character with whom he had the best chemistry—by miles—was Daniel. Whoops.
**
The story so far:
You know, I was going to try to do that, and then I realized... why? Or anyway, why do a detailed version. The non-detailed version goes something like this: The goa'uld want to wipe out Earth. They've been prevented from doing this. Earth has developed interstellar spaceflight, and maintains offworld bases, and has alien allies. While all this was happening, SG-1 destroyed several goa'uld, but it was somewhat like playing whack-a-mole, and new goa'uld keep rising up to take a run at Earth. (Convenient, that.)
Really, that's pretty much all you need to know. You can fill in the details later.
**
What you need to know about the rest of the galaxy:
The goa'uld are the bad guys. We talked about them already—parasitic, megalomaniacal, etc. They also have very bad clothes sense, and have never read the Evil Overlord list. They fly around space in giant pyramids that are all gold on the inside, because if you were a megalomaniacal parasite, wouldn't you?
The Jaffa are the goa'uld's power base, tied to goa'uld service by their need for immature symbiotes. Teal'c and the SGC have, over time, pulled some Jaffa away from their gods, and they (catchily titled "The Rebel Jaffa") are either living independently while working to recruit more Jaffa to their cause or operating as a fifth column within goa'uld armies. In S6, a chemical called tretonin was developed; it can serve as an alternative to the symbiotes, and several (though by no means all) Jaffa now take this drug.
The Tok'ra are goa'uld who decided maybe this whole taking-hosts-by-force idea was kind of, you know, immoral, and now they don't do it anymore, except when they do. There aren't very many of them; they basically work by subversion, trying to weaken the goa'uld. One of them took over Sam in an attempt to escape a goa'uld assassin ("except when they do") and later died, but left her with enough knowledge for the SGC to be able to find the other Tok'ra. Sam's father, who was a General in the Air Force and who was at that time dying of cancer, was cured when he agreed to take a Tok'ra symbiote. The SGC and the Tok'ra are basically allies, though there's been something of a breakdown in that recently.
The Asgard are Roswell-esque little grey men, who are generally benevolent protectors of humanity. They had (and possibly still have, though the political situation is complicated) a treaty with the goa'uld, wherein the goa'uld left certain human-occupied worlds alone or else the Asgard would crush them. The Asgard are considerably more technologically advanced than the goa'uld, but have problems of their own back in their home galaxy, and could not actually come into the Milky Way in order to engage in any sort of large-scale campaign against the goa'uld. They impersonate Norse gods, and their leader, Thor, has a crush on Jack. Seriously. (Well, not canonically by a strict definition of canon, but dude, he named the flagship of the Asgard fleet after the guy.)
The Replicators are machine lifeforms, which have been attempting on-and-off to destroy the Asgard for quite a while, with some success. They assimilate technology in a way that is totally stolen from the Borg. (Stargate is not shy about borrowing from other franchises.) They were originally little bug-shaped creatures, but are now human-form.
The NID--which stands for something, but hell if I remember what at this point, National Intelligence Directory or something--are a governmental organization with, um, look, it's all kind of unclear. They're the Internal Adversaries. Supposedly they've been cleaned out recently, but up until the sixth season they were increasingly troublesome, undermining interstellar treaties and stealing alien technology and so on.
The big grey ring is the Stargate. Seven symbols for a gate within our galaxy; eight for one in another galaxy, but that requires a lot more power and is usually impossible. The Earth gate has an iris installed that can close in such a way that anything coming through the wormhole is unable to reintegrate, and instead is left in a smear of atoms on the iris. (Ew.) The Stargate can and has malfunctioned in various plot-inducing ways, though really it's pretty stable for a piece of alien technology that no one really understands. You can only travel one way through a wormhole, unless you're certain forms of energy (most conveniently, a radio wave).
The phallic guns are zatnikatels, called "zats." They're goa'uld technology, though now utilized by the SGC as well. One shot stuns (and causes a great deal of pain), two kills, three disintegrates. This is very helpful for post-battle cleanup.
**
What you need to know about the fandom:
The Stargate fandom is arranged basically into two camps, based on their differing answer to the question "who does Jack share his tent with when he sleeps offworld?" (The best part is that the tents may or may not be canonical. I think there was one in an S1 episode, but if so, we've never seen it since. But you'd never know it to read the fic.)
Anyway, the two big ships are Sam/Jack and Jack/Daniel. (We do not do portmanteaus in Stargate fandom, thankfully.) Inter-ship warfare can be ugly at times, though I've pretty successfully avoided it because I experience the fandom mostly through LJ. Stargate went through a Grand Hullabaloo back in S5, when Michael Shanks declined to renew his contract and left the show. This was the last straw for some of the Daniel fans who'd already been unhappy about the show's tilt toward S/J (they did a big push in that direction in S4, later backed off from) and what they saw as the reduced importance of the relationship between Jack and Daniel, and they got very upset. For whatever reason—and yes, as you can imagine the reasons for MS' departure and his return have been picked over exhaustively, but I've decided I don't care—MS decided to come back for the seventh season, which was at that point assumed to be the last. (So was the sixth season. And the eighth. I fully expect to be watching these people in wheelchairs.) At the same time, RDA's time commitment to the show went down considerably; as of S8, he was living in LA and commuting up to Vancouver to shoot something like one week out of every month.
Central fic archives are Heliopolis (gen and non-explicit het), Heliopolis 2 (explicit het) and Area 52 (slash). The first rec page I usually point people to is
destina's, here, but that's mostly slash with some gen. I don't know the S/J end of things very well, but I know nandamai has a recs page here, and I like her S/J so it seems likely her recs are worth looking at. sathinks also volunteered her Stargate SG-1 recs below, and SA's got good taste, so they're worth a lookI'm not going to try to point you to any mailing lists or forums, because frankly they scare me. Try Gateworld for all of your Stargate information needs, including summaries of and pictures from all previous episodes, but beware—the front page is often spoilery. Arduinna's Stargate SG-1 Handbook is a treasure trove of random information about things like What Medals Does Jack Have, According To His Uniform? Icons can be found at
stargate_icons, and episode reviews and other show discussion are linked to on metagate. Other Stargate communities I’m in myself are sg1_beyond_otp, devoted to threesomes and more, sg_infinite, devoted to Stargate AUs, and stargate100, the fandom's drabble community.We like new blood, really. Just ask a Stargate-related question, and we will fling ourselves upon you with abandon. Or anyway, that's been my experience.
**
Completely Subjective Recommended Episodes (I'll do three per season):
Children of the Gods, the two-hour pilot--because, you know, backstory.
S1: Tin Man, There But For the Grace of God (as a bonus, this episode is from a story by David Kemper), Within the Serpent's Grasp. (There's a clip show called Politics between the last two that's a useful primer for S1, but, well, it's a clip show. You should be able to figure out how you got from Grace of God to Serpent's Grasp without too much trouble.)
S2: The Serpent's Lair, Thor's Chariot, The Fifth Race
S3: Forever in a Day, Maternal Instinct, Nemesis
S4: Small Victories, Window of Opportunity, 2010
S5: Beast of Burden, Menace, Meridian
S6: Abyss, Paradise Lost, Full Circle
S7: Fragile Balance, Heroes, Lost City (both of those last two are two-parters, but, well, this is my post and I get to make the rules)
S8 (so far): New Order (another two-parter), Zero Hour, and Endgame (just for the ending)
Also, they did Lowdowns before S7 and S8, and I could swear I remember that they're doing another one before the second half of S8, so keep an eye out.
**
Farscape vs. Stargate
Okay, here's the thing. If you're coming over to Stargate for the Ben Browder, you need to know, Stargate does not do the kind of character arcing and long-term impacts that Farscape did. It's an episodic action-adventure show. Jack O'Neill once spent several days being repeatedly tortured to death and revived; the impact of this has been some added snarkiness towards the Tok'ra (whose fault it indirectly was) and a couple of veiled comments on his part to the adversary who did it. Stargate is also not usually a very ambitious show. Farscape aimed high; when it hit it really hit, and when it missed, it missed spectacularly. Stargate hums along smoothly, telling its stories; it's not a show that usually bowls me over with its brilliance or riskiness, because that's not the kind of show that it's usually trying to be.
That said, it is a very likable show. SG does have some sense of history; it does do plot arcs, and its characters do change over time, though that's not really what the show is about; and it's turned out seven and a half years of pretty solid television. I love it the way it is, and I'm pretty excited to see how they work BB's character into it, if a little nervous about what we're going to lose from the show in order to get him. I'm also pretty excited that maybe new, smart, interesting people are going to get into the show and say smart, interesting things about it, and write fic, and all the other good things that come with an influx into the fandom.
But please, don't expect it to be Farscape. It's really, really not.
For one thing, there's no vomit.
**
Oh, and one more thing: Daniel was right about the pyramids. He usually is, when it comes to that kind of stuff.
