Stargate (The original movie)

[Mark]

I just rented the movie, to check out where it all came from again. A couple of observations....

My lord. James Spader and Michael Shanks could be brothers! They could impersonate each other.

I'm AMAZED at how well they worked with the continuity. Trek writers could SERIOUSLY take a lesson. Character names, references, even back story all jive. The only slip I noticed was O'Neil's dead son's name was Peter in the movie, and Charlie in the show, but that is incredibly minor.

The Stargate itself looked similar even.


But what happened to the "freezing" effect of Stargate travel. Happened in the movie, and in the pilot......but we never see it again.

[Vic]

I think it is too bad that we never see the Anubis helmet in the series, do we see the Horus helmets? There are references to the Horus Guard but I don't remember seeing their helmets.

[Sionnach Glic]

I'm AMAZED at how well they worked with the continuity. Trek writers could SERIOUSLY take a lesson. Character names, references, even back story all jive. The only slip I noticed was O'Neil's dead son's name was Peter in the movie, and Charlie in the show, but that is incredibly minor.

Damn right. I saw the movie before catching re-runs of the first couple of SG-1 series on the TV, and I too was surprised at how organicaly it all seemed to flow from the movie to the series. Nothing about it seemed forced or contrived at all, which is what you usually get with TV adaptions of a movie. The characters were all spot-on, even those played by different actors, which is quite a feat.

But what happened to the "freezing" effect of Stargate travel. Happened in the movie, and in the pilot......but we never see it again.

It was dropped quietly during the first series of SG-1. I'm not sure, but I'd imagine it had something to do with either the budget (let's face it, a show like SG-1 would have cost a lot to produce without adding ice make-up as well), or that the show's writers never really liked the idea and only kept it in the first couple of episodes to keep continuity with the film before quietly dissappearing it. Much like the zat gun's three-shot-disintegration mode.

I think it is too bad that we never see the Anubis helmet in the series, do we see the Horus helmets? There are references to the Horus Guard but I don't remember seeing their helmets.

We saw them a few times, but not often. Hathor and Her'ur usesd them, IIRC. I think it's a pity we didn't get to see more of them. I always thought they looked cooler than the Serpent Guard.

In the original film I actually got the impression that the armour was some sort of indication of rank. Ra's Horus Guard squads appeared to have been led by a Jackal Guard, which led me to believe they indicated the position of the Jaffa within the ranks. It was probably a wrong belief, but I think it could have been cool to see in the show. Serpent Guards forming the main army, with Horus Guards as sort of elite troops and Jackal Guard officers leading squads of both into battle.
The Stargate RPG apparently has detail on a whole load of different Guard types, which could have further fleshed out the ranks. Though that would probably have stretched the budget a tad too far.

[Monroe]

IU the freezing thing was solved when they figured out how to fix the problem of cosmic drift and some how tighten the worm hole to keep heat in through

Another error from the movie to the show was in the show all Goa'uld worlds are in the Milky Way Galaxy right? In the movie the desert world is on the other side of the known universe. They explained it in the show that they hadn't perfected seeing where the wormhole was going yet.

[Graham Kennedy]

If you remember, in the movie you also exit the gate with a fair bit of velocity - enough to go flying down the ramp.

In the series they explained this as being due to Earth not having a Dial Home Device; they had to build their own interface to the gate from scratch, and they didn't get it quite right. Later on they solved the problem and walking through a gate was just like walking through a door.

It actually makes sense... all you need to do is assume that their initial setup miscalculated the energy levels and converted some of your heat energy into kinetic energy by mistake and you have a plausible explanation that even obeys conservation of energy. One of the things I really liked about SG1 was they they often pulled stuff like that, explaining stuff in ways that actually made sense with minimum technobabble.

[Mark]

It DID seem, however, that staff weapons seemed a hell of a lot more powerful in the movie. When they struck they seemed almost like mini grenande launchers.....and yet in the show they seemed to lose quite a bit of their wallop.

[Graham Kennedy]

As I recall they said that they had introduced much better body armor to explain that, too.

For me, staff weapons were summed up perfectly on the show itself.

[Vic]

I think it is too bad that we never see the Anubis helmet in the series, do we see the Horus helmets? There are references to the Horus Guard but I don't remember seeing their helmets.

We saw them a few times, but not often. Hathor and Her'ur usesd them, IIRC. I think it's a pity we didn't get to see more of them. I always thought they looked cooler than the Serpent Guard.

In the original film I actually got the impression that the armour was some sort of indication of rank. Ra's Horus Guard squads appeared to have been led by a Jackal Guard, which led me to believe they indicated the position of the Jaffa within the ranks. It was probably a wrong belief, but I think it could have been cool to see in the show. Serpent Guards forming the main army, with Horus Guards as sort of elite troops and Jackal Guard officers leading squads of both into battle.
The Stargate RPG apparently has detail on a whole load of different Guard types, which could have further fleshed out the ranks. Though that would probably have stretched the budget a tad too far.

The movie helmets had moving "heads", the Serpent Guards helmets didn't, it would probably have soaked up too much of the budget for such a long running series.

[LaughingCheese]

It was dropped quietly during the first series of SG-1. I'm not sure, but I'd imagine it had something to do with either the budget (let's face it, a show like SG-1 would have cost a lot to produce without adding ice make-up as well), or that the show's writers never really liked the idea and only kept it in the first couple of episodes to keep continuity with the film before quietly dissappearing it. Much like the zat gun's three-shot-disintegration mode.

I always thought it just had to do with time constraints of TV vs film, they just don't have the time to show every little effect the Stargate might produce, just like they don't show the hole worm hole sequence. Also, remember they showed the worm hole for at least the first or second seasons in SG-1 and then they dropped that as well.

Just like zat gun's the effect was retconned out of existence, I think mainly due to time limits.

Besides, a transportation device that freezes your face and makes you sick every time you use it can't be too practical, so I do like that the show the Stargate appear to be a flawless device.

One more theory is that perhaps you build up some sort of immunity. It was mentioned that some people feel sick after going through but it seemed like they got used to it.



EDIT

Another observation:

The staff weapons in the movie seemed to have two ends. One fired the energy bolt, while the other end had a charge and was like a taser for disabling.

In the series its just like a butt stock in a rifle, just a big weight for beating up your opponent if hand to hand combat is required.

[Graham Kennedy]

IIRC, the problem with the Zats was that the disintegration was just too damn useful. They found that writers would set up some dilemma or problem and then say "well why don't we just disintegrate X and it solves the problem." So they decided to drop it. Don't know that they actively stated that they didn't have the capability though.

The freezing thing is nice as a gimmick, but it would just get in the way a lot of the time.

My favourite story; there's a scene in one ep where they come back through the gate and O'Neil stops and jabs his finger into the wormhole field for fun before walking off. The actor improvised it as a cutesy little moment, and since he's a bigwig on the show as well as the star, they went with it.

Next day he gets a call from the effects department. "You stuck your finger in the stargate." "Yes I did." "Yeah... we had to ditch the stock footage of the event horizon and render a new one with a ripple pattern radiating out from your finger. It cost us twenty hours of rendering time and about fifteen thousand dollars. Please don't do that again..."

[Sionnach Glic]

Nice one.

[Deepcrush]

Awww, how sad for them that they had to do THEIR JOBS...

[Graham Kennedy]

It's time and money that has to come away from somewhere else. I wouldn't want to be the one who had to tell the director he had to lose thirty seconds worth of effect shots that episode because they were busy redoing stock footage.

[Deepcrush]

They could have just cut him doing the finger in the pool thing. That would have saved them everything.