Ryan M. Patrick

This isn’t necessarily a #savestargate post. I don’t trust Amazon Prime to not totally drop the ball, Rings of Power and Wheel of Time are both basically unwatchable. But I don’t want the franchise to die, or even worse, be rebooted, because it means a lot to me – probably more than any other media outside of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan books.

I was never a big TV guy, never was, still am not. I didn’t watch much TV as a kid outside of Magic School Bus and Thomas the Tank Engine…and sports. Tons of sports. That was what my family watched, Phillies games and Eagles games and whatnot, all of us crowded around the 32″ RCA TV in the living room in Glenmoore. But sometimes my dad would throw on a TV show, usually sci-fi. I saw plenty of Star Trek: The Next Generation or DS9 or Babylon 5 episodes when I was too young to appreciate them fully. But the sense of scale and adventure really captured me, same with the Star Wars original trilogy. Sci-fi was my thing.

And then, during a family trip to California one summer, I stayed up late with my dad and caught the back half of a Stargate SG-1 episode. It was Cor-Ai, from the first season, where Teal’c is sentenced to death by a planet that he enslaved while he was in service to Apophis yet ends up saving the day at the end. And I was hooked – the serpent guards, cool military gear, the banter between the SG-1 team, it just grabbed me and never let go. I was maybe 9 or 10 but Stargate just blew me away. I had just seen the first Indiana Jones movie and the mix of ancient civilizations and technology and hidden secrets just hit every note for me. It’s like a technothriller with how realistic they had the military aspects and a sci-fi movie with all of the alien species and it’s like it was created in a lab to be the perfect setting and story for me.

After coming back from California, my dad rented the movie from Blockbuster (against my mom’s direction!) and my younger brother & I watched it with him. And then I didn’t see any more episodes for a while – we didn’t have Showtime. But then after the Eagles season was over that winter, the local Fox affiliate started playing Stargate SG-1 in syndication in that exact same time slot, 1 PM Eastern. I think it was Season 4 or 5. And then when it switched to the Sci-Fi channel, my Friday nights were spent watching SG-1 and later Atlantis with my dad and brother (and occasionally my mom or one of my sisters) and my brother and I caught up on all of the episodes we missed during marathons while we were on school breaks or the summer. It was the show we all liked.

Looking at me now, it’s obvious the impact it had on me. I went to the Air Force Academy (like Samantha Carter!) and spent a decade in the Air Force and Space Force. If there was a secret Stargate program, I would have been a part of it – unfortunately, there’s not! But I still work in the space sector and would love to see my kids walk on another planet, either by going there directly or through a wormhole. And there’s plenty of secrets lurking behind black-budget compartments…

I still have never been hooked by a TV show quite like Stargate SG-1. I love Babylon 5, The Expanse, the 80s/90s Star Treks, but Stargate is my favorite. I still quote it all of the time when I talk with my brother and dad, I make Goa’uld references at work, and I own the whole series on DVD – my wife and I have watched it together a couple of times. It’s just the perfect show, and it’s been a huge influence on my own writing. I am the primary audience for the revival, and that’s why I’m so frustrated that it got canned. I don’t want a reboot, I want to know how the Stargate program handles the modern era – how they keep it secret, what new threats are out there, will they ever resolve the Universe storyline.

What warms my heart though is how many fellow Stargate fans are out there. I’m not a part of any “community,” I think that whole thing is stupid, but it seems like other people have had a similar experience to me with respect to the show. And it shows the divide between Hollywood and the audience – we want shows like Stargate SG-1, with a team of competent protagonists, a grounded, consistent setting, terrific acting, and completely unforced diversity both amongst the humans and aliens. There’s a huge demand signal out there. But Hollywood doesn’t want the U.S. military to be the good guys, to show humanity win against overwhelming odds, and seem to want to send a message rather than earn my hard-earned dollar. I think there’s a huge audience for a Stargate revival or a show that hits the same notes, and it’s unfortunate that the latest iteration ended the way that it did.