Stargate SG-1: Time Traveler Team Says Goodbye, for Now

Tonight’s episode of Stargate SG-1 marks the end of an era. It’s the last of a series that has lasted 10 seasons and 215 episodes on two cable stations. Though there won’t be any new weekly SG-1 adventures on Sci Fi, the team will be jumping through wormholes for some time to come.

The series finale is entitled, appropriately enough, “Unending.” Without giving too much away, Major General Landry and the Stargate team find themselves trapped onboard a ship in deep space. We get to see the familiar characters age and deal with decades worth of stir craziness. There’s even a bit of romance. Recalling a hint of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s fond farewell, it’ a nice way of giving viewers a taste of what the characters’ futures could hold.

Sad as the farewell might be, fans are in the unique position of knowing that their characters will continue past tonight’s episode. Sci Fi cancelled SG-1 last August, within hours of airing the 200th episode but Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (who owns the franchise) knows they have a good thing going and have made plans to continue the SG-1 story.

For starters, some of the SG-1 characters will be joining the spin-off series Stargate Atlantis when it returns in the Fall. Amanda Tapping (Lt. Col. Samantha Carter) will be a series regular and Torri Higginson (Elizabeth Weir) will be a recurring character.

On top of that, two SG-1 movies are already in the works. The first will be called Stargate: The Ark of Truth and will focus on the ongoing fight with the Ori. The “Ark” is an artifact that is capable of brainwashing someone into changing their beliefs, a handy tool to have in a war. While SG-1 searches for it in the Ori galaxy, the team learns that Ori ships will be sent through the Supergate to launch a final assault on Earth. The I.O.A. has a plan of their own and SG-1 ends up fighting two powerful enemies in a distant galaxy. Production of Stargate: The Ark of Truth has been completed and the DVD is expected to be released in the Fall.

The second SG-1 movie is entitled Stargate: Continuum and will feature the return of Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson), Goa’uld Nirrti (Jacqueline Samuda), and the evil Baal (Cliff Simon). While the SG-1 team are attending the execution of Baal, Teal’c and Vala vanish. Carter, Daniel and Mitchell soon discover that history has been changed and the Stargate program has been wiped from history. As they try to find a way to repair the timeline, a fleet of Goa’uld motherships arrives, led by Baal, his queen Katesh (Vala), and his first prime Teal’c. Location work included several cast and crewmembers traveling to the U.S. Navy’s Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station in the Arctic. Production of Stargate: Continuum is still underway and is expected to be released on DVD prior to the end of the year.

For the cast, the transition to movies is understandably a mixed blessing. Castmember Christopher Judge (Teal’c) jokes, “I don’t like to actually call the series [finale] an ending. I prefer to call it the ending of a weekly check. But it was time for us to take this next step. We have been looking forward to doing movies for five years now.”

If the two DVD movies do well, you can be rest assured that the adventures of the Stargate SG-1 team will continue on for years to come.

More about: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1

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