Stargate: Continuum – Preview

I’ve been a fan of Stargate SG-1 since it started (MacGyver + aliens = YES PLEASE), so I jumped at the chance to get a look at the new SG-1 direct to DVD movie.

Admittedly I haven’t been keeping close tabs on the series lately, but I was truly intrigued by the previews for “Continuum”, and being a fan of how SG-1 has handled time travel issues in the past on the show, and being a science geek, I had to check it out.

Although how they deal with time travel in this movie is a far cry from their usual adherence to some level of logic, the story was actually pretty interesting. I enjoyed it, even if I did cringe a few times at their frank admittance that the story didn’t make any sense in the context of time paradoxes and such. If you’re a fan of SG-1, chances are you’ll like this flick. It’s very much just an extended episode, and includes a few fun cameos…which is always a crowd pleaser.

Here comes the spoilers now, so if you don’t want the full scoop on the story and some preview screen caps, you might want to stop reading and just wait for the movie.

The movie starts out with a ceremony to extract the Goa’uld symbiont from the last clone of the last Goa’uld system lord, Ba’al. Meanwhile, the real Ba’al has built a time machine and uses it to go back to the 1930’s and stop the Stargate project from ever starting.

This is where the serious breakdown of science and logic starts, and I would have expected it from most shows/movies…but not SG-1, since they’ve dealt with time travel in the past and didn’t make me hate them. Once Ba’al stops the Stargate Project from ever starting (by sending the gate up to the arctic where no one can find it), the movie goes back to the extraction ceremony in the present, where people start to disappear randomly.

There is a lot wrong with that, but I could have dealt with it a lot easier if the people left behind didn’t retain memories of the people that disappear (since in the context of them never having been there due to the lack of Stargate program would mean they were NEVER there to begin with)….but I’ll just ignore the bad science and move on to the story.

After Jack O’Neil gets stabbed, and Teal’C and Vala disappear into thin air, the 3 remaining SG-1 members hightail to the gate, and when they get through the other side, expecting Stargate Command….they end up in the frozen remains of the ship that still holds the gate in the arctic circle, deep under the ice.

They escape that, only have have Daniel freeze his foot into uselessness, so the others go for help, and find it in the form of a Jack O’Neil that doesn’t recognize them, and is still in the Special Forces. Turns out when they went through the gate they ended up being saved from the shift in the spacetime continuum and are now in an alternate time line where there is no Stargate project.

A year goes by and they are getting settled finally…..just in time for Ba’al to come back to Earth to take over, and without the Stargate project ever having started, Earth is defenseless. SG-1 to the rescue of course, and after a few impossible tasks get done (as with any good episode of SG-1) the good guys win, with just enough foreshadowing of possible mysteries left over to leave an opening for more SG-1 action in the future. The ending also has some more of the time travel logic issues from the beginning, but if you can get passed that, the whole thing is pretty entertaining really.

Throughout the movie there are a few familiar faces come back for a cameo. Richard Dean Anderson, of course, is the big one. But there is also an appearance of General Hammand, played by Don S. Davis, who sadly passed away just a couple of days ago), and others that fans of the series will recognize.

All in all it was pretty good, though really it wasn’t much more than an extended episode with a few expletives that wouldn’t have made it to air on the show. Any fan of the series should enjoy it. It does nothing to explain the back-story or who any of the character’s are though, so it’s not very accessible to people that haven’t at least watched enough of the show to get the idea.

It’s no “Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars”, but it was pretty good for what it was.