In its blurring of reality and representation and its embrace of surface spec-tacle over cognitive substance, Stargate SG-1 might best be understood in the context of postmodern sf. Baudrillard framed the Gulf War in another sort of adaptive context as “the decoy of the event” that replaced the real war, one readily embraced by the public because “we have neither the need of nor the taste for real drama or real war” (309). In their own ways both Stargate and Stargate SG-1 share this postmodern sensibility of lacking
“real drama,” and herein we perhaps fi nd the clue to the success of this adaptation. Robert Stam, rejecting the standard of fi delity to evaluate adap-tation, understands texts as permanently open structures rather than fi xed entities, ones that “fee[d] on and [are] fed into an infi nitely permutating intertext, which is seen through ever-shifting grids of interpretation” (57).
Thus, he argues, it is ultimately impossible to distinguish original from adaptation, as both are formed by multiple antecedents: all texts are “tis-sues of anonymous formulae, variations of those formulae, conscious and unconscious quotations, and confl ations and inversions of other texts” (64).
Similarly, Fredric Jameson argues that postmodernism is characterized by, among other things, heterogeneity without a center, a dead imitation of styles of the past rather than a reactivation of their emergent qualities as expressions of living, collective human endeavor. One of the aesthetic impulses of postmodernism is a shift away from parody, with its inherent notion of critique, and toward pastiche, an imitation “amputated of the
Stargate SG-1 and the Visualization of the Imagination 79 satiric impulse, devoid of laughter and of any conviction that alongside the abnormal tongue you have momentarily borrowed, some healthy linguistic normality still exists” (17). Understanding Stargate SG-1 as a postmodern, postfi delity adaptation can help explain why episodes such as “Heroes,”
with its sentimental angst about military service, can comfortably exist side-by-side with episodes such as “Wormhole X-Treme!” without any sense of contradiction troubling the audience.
The series’ treatment of cliché is perhaps one of the best ways to grasp its qualities as postmodern pastiche. Stargate SG-1 is, fi nally, an unashamedly derivative series. Even its most emotionally intense moments, such as Dan-iel’s ascension at the end of season 6, cannot claim any originality: Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) similarly ascended at the end of Babylon 5 and Sisko (Avery Brooks) joined the Prophets in an otherworldly realm at the end of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993-99). Over the course of Stargate SG-1, the characters themselves comment on the often clichéd and implausible nature of their own lives/stories: in “The Other Guys” (2 August 2002), for example, O’Neill informs the scientists captured with SG-1 what to expect next, namely, “some over-dressed, over-the-top bad guy glides in gloating about what evil fate awaits us”; in “Fragile Balance” (20 June 2003) the team quickly accepts that a teenage boy purporting to be an age-regressed O’Neill is telling the truth, noting “stranger things have happened,” before recalling examples from previous episodes; in “Inauguration” (24 February 2004) the president is almost convinced to disband the team based on evi-dence of the risk they pose, documented by recounting the plots of previous episodes13 and noting the frequency with which team members have been taken over by aliens; in “Citizen Joe” (18 January 2005) a man experiencing O’Neill’s life as dreams tries to turn these adventures into short stories and is rejected 326 times by various magazines, prompting a friend to comment
“we are all just regurgitating the same ideas over and over, boiling them down to a great pot of mediocrity”; in “Arthur’s Mantle” (24 February 2006) Mitchell (Ben Browder) becomes confused and needs the difference between alternative realities and alternate dimensions explained to him, and then concludes, “Hell, all I need is a good time-travelling adventure and I’ll have hit the SG-1 trifecta”; in “The Shroud” (30 January 2007), Daniel argues to O’Neill that it is necessary they follow through on a plan because “the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance,” to which O’Neill replies, “that old chestnut”; and so on.
Thus, knowing they are repeating sf clichés becomes a part of the fun in Stargate SG-1, a quality that is nowhere more apparent than in the two-hundredth episode titled simply “200” (18 August 2006). Here Martin Lloyd returns to announce plans for a fi lm adaptation of Wormhole X-Treme! and to seek input from the SG-1 team on the script. What follows is a series of scenes that switch from his discussion of the script to the regular cast performing the imagined fi lm footage and back to their discussion, which dismisses the implausibility of most of these scenarios. Mitchell, for example, imagines the
80 Sherryl Vint
need to fi ght zombies produced by an alien device in the SGC, and it seems not that far a stretch to imagine this as a possible script rejected for the series itself: zombies are among the few clichés not visited. Martin proposes a sce-nario in which the team fl ees an overwhelming number of replicators, only to be cornered on a cliff overlooking a valley fi lled with Jaffa warriors, which quickly cuts to them walking safely out of the gate. Criticized by others for this too-convenient rescue, he insists just-in-time rescues are standard writ-ing techniques, made palatable to the audience by “hang[writ-ing] a lantern on it,”
that is, by having a character comment on how convenient it was, thus dem-onstrating the show’s self-awareness. Various other in-jokes and parodies of similar sf shows ensue, including both Star Trek and Farscape (1999–2003), the previous show of series regulars Ben Browder and Claudia Black. All of this activity culminates in the wrap party for the two-hundredth episode of Wormhole X-Treme.
A number of Wormhole X-Treme! cast members are interviewed in the epi-sode’s fi nal moments, most of these interviews making light of both shows.
For example, Raymond Gunne/Dr. Levant comments on “not really leaving the show” but just gaining some distance to get back to the “craft” of acting, rather than always working with “people throwing paper-maché boulders at you,” quickly adding that “both are good.” Yet the episode ends on an oddly serious note, similar to the tone of “Heroes”: Douglas Anders (Herbert Dun-canson), the actor/character who plays Grell, looks solemnly into the camera and says, “Science fi ction is an existential metaphor that allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said that individual science fi ction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today but the core of science fi ction, its essence, has become critical to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all.” Such a claim seems curious appended to a series that is perhaps better described by Booker’s comment on contemporary series Andromeda (2000–05) that it “touches on topical issues, but these tend to be treated in rather banal and uncontro-versial ways” (190). And indeed it is telling that this episode, although a fan favorite, was not the fi nal episode of Stargate SG-1.
Like Martin’s envisioned Wormhole X-Treme! movie, Stargate SG-1 was premised more strongly on the axiom that “big explosions make good trailers, simple fact,” than it was on any cognitive estrangement from our world or existential metaphors for the human condition. Jameson claims that in postmodernity we have lost the material world, which has been replaced by sheer images, and that we have lost history as a dimension of human collective action vital to a better future; instead, we have merely “a vast collection of images, a multitudinous photographic simulacrum” (18).
Stargate SG-1 fi nally might be seen as just such a collection of images. Its fi nal episode, “Unending” (13 March 2007), takes place predominantly in a “time dilation fi eld” in which the slower passage of time allows the crew to live approximately fi fty years. During this time, Daniel supposedly studies and learns all the vast knowledge of the Asgard race, but when
Stargate SG-1 and the Visualization of the Imagination 81 time is reset in the episode’s conclusion, he loses it again. Yet this loss does not matter because Stargate SG-1 was never about these things in the fi rst place: as the crew stand for one fi nal walk up the ramp and into the star-gate, they joke about all the things he has learned and forgotten, which they encapsulate in a series of clichés they exchange: “it’s always darkest before the dawn,” “life is too short,” and the like. Such last lines are matchlessly suitable for this series, the sf of spectacle, a show that might be understood not merely as an adaptation of the fi lm Stargate but, indeed, as an adapta-tion of the genre of sf itself, “an infi nitely permutating intertext” (Stam 57) that transforms the genre’s most well-worn conceits into the visual realm of spectacle.
NOTES
1. In contrast to this lack of critical acclaim, the series has been well regarded by the US military. The SG-1 team purportedly works for the US Air Force, and real Air Force Chiefs of Staff have made cameo appearances, General Michel E. Ryan in “Prodigy” (2 Feb. 2001) and General John P. Jumper in “Lost City: Part 2” (19 Mar. 2004). As well, Richard Dean Anderson received the Special Air Force Salute, an award given to civilians.
2. Stargate has been less successful with other ancillary products. Hasbro pro-duced action fi gures, and board games, trading cards, and comic books have all been successfully marketed. Two series of novelizations, one based on the fi lm and another on the series, have met with less success. A number of digital games have been in development, but various fi nancial problems have prevented their release. According to the DVD commentary on this episode and the Stargate Wiki (http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Avatar), CGI from one game was incorporated into the diegesis in the episode “Avatar” (13 Aug. 2004).
3. They link TV I to Ellis’s era of “scarcity” when few stations broadcast pro-grams and only during specifi c parts of the day and TV II to Ellis’s era of
“availability” in which a greater variety of programming times meant niche programming began to emerge.
4. See Wagner.
5. See Stam.
6. See Nelson.
7. It is almost impossible to chart the degree to which Stargate, both fi lm and series, are derivative of other sf. The light from the stargate reminds one of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1997); the shots of hands playing with the gate surface recall The Abyss (1989). The series draws frequently and overtly on other texts, reaching a kind of self-refl ective point of absurdity in the episode “Citizen Joe” in which a man attempting to recount an SG-1 adventure to his friends about an asteroid about to strike Earth is interrupted and told, “I’ve seen the movie. It hit Paris.” My reference to Kubrick’s fi lm is thus meant to convey the visual quality of these effects, not to contribute to a list of the many texts used to quilt together both fi lm and series.
8. This reinvention of villains is perhaps at its most foolish when the Lucian Alliance of humans takes the form of drug dealers selling addictive corn, but the Stargate Universe series, with its darker and more “adult” tone, striving for something closer to the new Battlestar Galactica, has recently reinvented these antagonists with more menace.
82 Sherryl Vint
9. It is a frequent complaint among sf fans that the genre is best defi ned as a “lit-erature of ideas,” and thus sf fi lm is an inferior or inadequate form. One of the many ways that Stargate SG-1 differs from other sf shows is in its impa-tience with technological rationales for its inventions and indeed its mocking of those interested in science as geeks in episodes like “The Other Guys.”
It is worth note that Roland Emmerich would direct many of the fi lms that are staples of spectacle-with-sf-premise, such as Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), and 2012 (2009).
10. In the later episode featuring these characters, “200,” she comments that the show didn’t seem to know what to do with her character, female scien-tist and soldier Stacy Monroe, a statement equally true of Stargate SG-1’s clumsy attempts to deal with Carter’s gender. When Carter is introduced, she is characterized as a defensive “feminist,” telling O’Neill, “Just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside doesn’t mean that I can’t handle anything you can handle” (“Children of the Gods”). An alter-native-world version of this character later considers this line and rejects it as ridiculous in the episode “Moebius Part II” (22 Feb. 2005). Various alien love interests are introduced for Carter, but none of these relationships ever progresses, and an ongoing thread about her and O’Neill’s mutual attrac-tion (upon which they cannot act, given their military relaattrac-tionship) persists throughout the series but is left ambiguously resolved. The series is praise-worthy for its refusal to sexualize Carter in costuming as happens with many women in sf series.
11. When Shanks returned in season 7, his character was given a more active role as a military presence based on his experience in the fi eld, although he remained a civilian. In the fi nal three seasons, he spends more time holding a gun than holding a reference book and in many ways becomes interchange-able with the military characters.
12. The fi lm also received a nomination in this category. Stargate SG-1 has never won a Hugo, although it did receive Saturn Awards for Best Syndicated/
Cable Series in 1997, 2003, and 2004. The other episode to receive a Hugo nomination (“200”) won a Constellation Award for best script.
13. This episode is one of many that cobble together footage from previous epi-sodes under the rubric of a review or other premise. The series includes at least one such episode each season after season 3. This technique saves on the budget for new episodes, allows maximum use of battle-sequence footage, and demonstrates the degree to which imitation, even of itself, is embedded in the show’s aesthetic.
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