What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Stargate: A Retrospective

Once upon a time in the 90s, back before Stargate was serialised in the form of multiple TV shows, it was a movie starring James Spader and Kurt Russell which was basically one of my favourite things ever. So deep was my love for the Stargate movie, in fact, that when the original TV show first aired, I refused to watch it - not because I balked at the idea of seeing the premise revisited, but because all my friends were completely unaware that it had ever been a movie. Worse still, when I told them the truth, they didn’t believe me: the year being 1997 and therefore profoundly pre-IMDB, let alone pre-Googling-everything, to say nothing of pre-everyone-had-the-internet, there simply wasn’t an obvious way to prove it.

And so I refused to watch the series: partly out of loyalty to the film and partly out of innate contrariness, but mostly because, if it were possible to watch the show without having seen the movie, then that implied to my eleven-year-old self that the creators had changed something, and I didn’t want to risk the possibility that a story I loved had been fundamentally altered. The one time I ever caught part of an episode, in fact, my suspicions in this respect were only proven true, as it seemed that one of the main characters from the film had been retconned into a new role. That may or may not be true - the memory in question is now more than a decade old, and refers to something I saw only once, out of context - but the point is, I’ve only ever seen the Stargate movie. 

And tonight, I rewatched it for the first time in years.

Internets, let me tell you about the Stargate movie: it is flawed, problematic and deeply of the 90s, and still completely awesome. There are several reasons for this, the foremost being that the setup is essentially perfect, and when I watched it again, I realised that the premise of Stargate has, for nearly twenty years, been my subconscious yardstick for Doing It Right in SF cinema.

The opening scene shows a young boy being abducted by aliens from ancient Earth. Cut to Egypt in 1928, where a young girl, attending an archaeological dig with her father, witnesses the excavation of the titular stargate and also claims possession of an awesome Eye of Ra necklace. Cut again to the modern day, where James Spader, aka Egyptologist Daniel Jackson - who, sidenote, I have never found even remotely attractive on any previous viewing, but who now suddenly registers as handsome - is roundly failing to convince a conference of academics that the great pyramid was built much earlier and by persons unknown than anyone previously thought. The audience gets up and leaves in disgust, but lurking in the shadows is the now-aged Katherine, aka the girl from the dig, who speaks to him outside the conference, reveals not only that he’s an orphan, but that he’s both run out of funding and been evicted, and therefore offers him a chance to come work for her; and Daniel, of course, having no other claims on his time, accepts.

Cut to Kurt Russell, aka Col. Jack O'Neil, a father grieving the death of his young son, who (we learn) accidentally shot himself, presumably while playing with one of his father’s guns. O'Neil is visited by a couple of army guys, who tell him he’s been reactivated.

Meanwhile, Daniel has arrived at the base where the stargate is being kept. At first, he’s shown only the innocuous cover stones, which feature two sets of hieroglyphs: one familiar, and one foreign. Within about two seconds, Daniel has pwned the previous linguist by correcting his bad translation in front of everyone; at which point, before anyone can tell him about the actual stargate, O'Neil shows up, now short-haired and suited, and declares the information confidential. Then comes a perfectly handled timeskip: Daniel has been working to translate the unknown hieroglyphs for two weeks, and is despairing of his progress. But on a trip to get coffee, he spies the horoscope pages of a newspaper and realises that the symbols on the coverstones aren’t another form of writing, but depictions of constellations. Success! A big meeting is called, the previous linguist gets further embarrassed when it becomes apparent that Daniel has solved in fourteen days what stymied his team for two years, and then the army guys show him the stargate. Daniel’s work helps them activate it; a portal to another world on the other side of the galaxy opens up; and a probe goes through, whose data determines both that there’s another gate on the other side and that the atmosphere is the same as on Earth. But if they send a team through, will they be able to get back? Easy: Daniel promises he can make the other gate work, Katherine gives him her necklace for good luck, and he and the others, lead by O'Neil, head on through.

That’s roughly the first twenty minutes, and even knowing what happens, it still never fails to enthrall me. The pacing is absolutely brilliant: both Daniel and O'Neil are introduced succinctly in ways that clearly define their struggles and motivations; Daniel’s discovery of the stargate is neither overdone nor underwhelming, but perfectly structured to give the audience a frisson of genuine excitement; and the tragedy of O'Neil’s situation - when we first meet him, he’s sitting in his son’s room, clearly contemplating suicide - gives us a rare sympathetic connection to a character who would otherwise remain a generic army badass. Whatever other failings the film has, the strength and excellence of these opening scenes is undeniable: not only do they boast solid scripting, deft characterisation, superb pacing and a perfectly balanced structure, but by successfully weaving together ancient puzzles, Egyptian mythology and science fiction into a compelling and internally consistent plot, they staked an enduring claim on my passions. I might not have realised it until tonight, but the reason why the Prometheus trailer gives me shivers - the reason why, whenever I read the blurbs for SF films, I’m always disappointed if they don’t reference ancient cultures and thrilled if they do - is entirely because of Stargate.

Emotionally, the film centers on three main relationships: the tension between Daniel and O'Neil, which heightens once Daniel realises that O'Neil has brought a nuke with him to blow up the alien stargate; the tentative friendship between O'Neil and Skaara, a young boy who looks up to him and wants to be a warrior; and the romance between Daniel and Sha'uri, a woman who is given to him by her father, the head of the tribe of humans enslaved on the alien world.

I’ll start with the last point first, because it really shouldn’t work, and yet somehow, it does. When Daniel and the soldiers first discover the humans living on the other side of the stargate, these locals - mislead by Daniel’s Eye of Ra necklace - assume them to be the agents of their ‘gods’: the aliens who built and control the stargate, and who, having enslaved the humans to work in their mines, are now their overlords. Water is brought to the team by local women, one of whom is Sha'uri; we see her eyeing Daniel appreciatively both then and later on, though he doesn’t yet notice her. Later, not realising that reading and writing are forbidden by Ra, Daniel frightens the chief, Kasuf - inferred to be Sha'uri’s father - by trying to draw hieroglyphs in the dirt. What happens next works only because, at this point, all the locals are still speaking their own language without subtitles, so that the audience doesn’t know what they’re saying. On the basis of observation, though, the subsequent scenes go something like this:

Kasuf: Oh shit, the foreigner is doing a forbidden thing! He’ll anger the gods! But his friends have stronger weapons than we do! Shit, shit! How can I distract him so he stops doing it? I know - I’ll give him my daughter to marry!

Kasuf: *summons all the old ladies to take Daniel away to the bridal chamber, where they wash his feet and brush his hair and generally pretty him up*

Daniel: Wait, what? So writing is forbidden, I guess? But why are all these ladies grooming me now? Seriously though, I have no idea what just happened. 

Ladies: *depart, grinning suggestively*

Daniel: *starts putting his socks on*

Sha'uri: *enters, veiled and shy*

Daniel: Please, not more foot-washing. Seriously, I’m fi-

Sha'uri: *lifts veil*

Daniel: Oh. Sorry, I thought you were with-

Sha'uri: *takes her top off*

Daniel: *stares at boobies*

Daniel: Oh, shit!

Daniel: *rushes to cover up Sha'uri’s boobies*

Daniel: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You don’t have to do that. Really, it’s fine, I’m so sorry-

Sha'uri: Goddamit, I am clearly trying to seduce you here! Did you not see me ogling you back at the mining camp?

Daniel: OK, shit, gotta get the girl out of here-

Daniel: *opens the door, finds Kasuf staring expectantly at him*

Kasuf: Sha'uri, what the hell? What did you do wrong!? Why is the foreigner not sleeping with you? We’re all doomed!

Sha'uri: I don’t know! I showed him my boobies and everything!

Daniel: *realises he’s done the wrong thing*

Daniel: Um, no, it’s fine! Really! I just wanted to say, um, thanks for giving me this woman! She’s great!

Daniel: *wraps his arm around Sha'uri and smiles desperately to show his enthusiasm*

Kasuf: Oh, so you like her? Please tell me you like her!

Daniel: I like her! So, um, bye!

Daniel: *shuts the door*

So clearly, the logic of this scene is… not so great. It works - or at least, doesn’t fail completely - only because half the conversation is missing: Daniel’s train of thought is obvious, because he keeps babbling to himself, but both Sha'uri and Kasuf only speak to each other in their own, as-yet-unsubtitled language, so that the audience is left to infer their side of the story from their actions. This is both a bad and a good thing: bad, in that it relies on our acceptance of the Brown People Distributing Women Like Bracelets stereotype to function; good, in that this ambiguity, together with the fact that Sha'uri isn’t visibly coerced and in fact appears to like Daniel, makes it a less definitively problematic scene that it might otherwise have been. 

Having ruled out sexytimes, Daniel and Sha'uri introduce themselves, which leads to the discovery that unlike Kasuf, Sha'uri isn’t afraid to draw symbols in the dirt, and in fact knows where the hieroglyphs Daniel wants to see can be found. Sneaking out the back way, she takes him down to the catacombs to see the writing on their walls. Though Sha'uri can’t read her own language - this is an ancient place, from before literacy was forbidden - when Daniel starts muttering translations out loud, she realises that he knows a form of her language. Mutually excited by this discovery, Sha'uri starts teaching Daniel the correct pronunciations, and together they spend the night talking, reading and learning the history of Sha'uri’s people, which is also the history of the stargate. 

Later, when Daniel is forced to leave, we see that both he and Sha'uri are reluctant to part from each other; he stares back at her as he leaves the city, and later Sha'uri expresses concern for his wellbeing when Skaara, her brother, reports that Daniel and the others have been captured by the aliens. It’s Sha'uri who then convinces Skaara and his friends to rebel, telling them the truth that she and Daniel discovered: that their overlords aren’t actually gods, but merely powerful mortals who can be overthrown. A rescue is effected, lead by Sha'uri and Skaara, which ultimately proves successful.

That night at the rebel camp, one of Skaara’s friends laughs at Daniel for performing a domestic task; when Daniel, who now speaks the language, asks why it’s funny, the boy replies that 'husbands don’t do that’. Daniel is shocked, not having realised that Sha'uri being given to him constituted a marriage. He takes her aside and asks her about it, gently; to which Sha'uri replies that Daniel doesn’t need to worry - she hasn’t told anyone that he didn’t want her. Her face as she says this clearly conveys her desire for him, and only once he sees this does Daniel realise that, contrary to what he’d initially thought, she hadn’t been sent to him unwillingly: he gently touches her cheek, expresses disbelief at the notion that he didn’t want her, and when she smiles, they kiss. 

In the final climactic battle, Sha'uri is killed, albeit temporarily: Daniel uses the alien technology to bring her back to life, just as he himself was resurrected earlier in the film. With the enemy vanquished and the stargate restored, Daniel opts to stay behind with his new wife; we already know he has nothing left on Earth - no parents, no home, no job - but more than that, we know that he’s fallen in love.

Put bluntly, this plotline shouldn’t work; and yet somehow, it manages to be both tender and believable, particularly when compared to most other action films that insist on the inclusion of a Bonus! romance plot. Here’s what makes the difference:

  • Sha'uri clearly notices Daniel before he notices her, and goes to him willingly. Despite the problematic use of marriage as an example of the Crazy Cultural Comparison trope, the fact that Sha'uri is never shown to be uncomfortable with him - and is, in fact, self-possessed enough to just get on with being brave and intelligent after being rejected initially - serves as a subtle but meaningful form of character development.
  • As beautiful as Daniel clearly finds Sha'uri, what actually attracts him to her is their time in the catacombs: her defiance of the prohibition on writing, her confidence in teaching him her language, and their shared enjoyment of history. The fact that she then rescues him from his enemies is also a point in her favour.
  • In more obnoxious stories, the handsome Earthman actively seduces the alien woman, or at least has to overcome her token resistance. But Sha'uri and Daniel, despite their clear intelligence and compassion, are both shy people.Accordingly, neither one really seduces the other: instead, they come together in a sweet, awkward way that’s nonetheless founded on mutual desire.
  • Daniel isn’t an action hero, and Sha'uri, for all her agency, isn’t an action heroine. This isn’t one of those films where two starcrossed warriors have to prove their prowess to one another and then hook up because of how all their apparently sexy arguments in close quarters have lead to UST; and nor is it an instance of the hapless native damsel being carried off by an enlightened Western man. Crucially for this latter point, Daniel neither tries to convince Sha'uri that her culture is wrong or backward for giving her to him in marriage - he doesn’t give her the dreaded White Man’s Lecture On Feminism - nor exploits her at the point when he’s uncertain about her willingness to be with him. Instead, he calmly accepts their marriage as a thing that’s happened, and when he realises that she wants him, he kisses her tenderly: just like a new husband should.
  • And, finally: Daniel stays with Sha'uri. Not once do we see him try and convince her to come to Earth, or hesitate over becoming part of her world. Which ought to go without saying; and yet, so often in plots where Earthmen fall in love with otherworldly women (or, for that matter, where Earthwomen fall in love with otherworldly men; or even just where women who live in one place love men who come from another), it’s the ladies who end up changing locations, or else who get left behind for ages or forever while the guy goes off to make one last trip home, do one last thing, or otherwise winds up back where he started. It’s what happens - for instance - in films as varied as John Carter, Planet of the Apes, Tron: Legacy and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, to say nothing of multiple times in Doctor Who; even in The Muppets, it’s Miss Piggy who moves from Paris to accommodate Kermit. But Daniel Jackson - much like Milo Thatch in Atlantis - stays with his lady; and that’s a move I’m always going to respect.  

Next up, there’s Daniel’s relationship with O'Neil, which is less an actual relationship than it is a study in contrasts. Both men enter the movie at a low ebb: Daniel’s life has collapsed, while O'Neil’s marriage is breaking around the loss of his son. Where the stargate project offers Daniel the chance to redeeem himself, however, it offers O'Neil the chance to die with dignity: his secret orders were always to stay behind once the others went home and blow up the stargate from the other side - a one-man suicide mission. As both men come to terms with their lives, their outlooks change, so that by the end, they’ve effectively switched positions: Daniel, who started out desperately clinging to a life that no longer functioned, has made the healthy choice to abandon it entirely for something better; while O'Neil, who never intended to return home, has come to realise exactly how much he has left to live for. Which makes for a neat comparison, and certainly serves both of their characters well.

There is, however, the matter of O'Neil and Skaara’s friendship still to discuss.

On the one hand, this is a touching and positive thing: O'Neil has lost a son, while Skaara, an active and inquisitive youth, sees O'Neil as a sort of martial idol. O'Neil is initially uncomfortable about this, but as Skaara slowly connects with him, we see him come back to himself, recovering from his son’s death by reaching out to Skaara. But, on the other hand: O'Neil’s son died from an accidental gunshot wound, and Skaara is obsessed with O'Neil’s guns. The first time he touches one, O'Neil understandably freaks out, shouting at him to get away; the second time, Skaara and his friends have just rescued O'Neil and the others, and when O'Neil’s lieutenant praises the boys for their efforts, O'Neil angrily snatches their guns away and tells his soldier - who argues that arming the boys is a great idea, as they 'sure could use their help’ - that they’ll only end up hurting themselves. Which is totally understandable! And when one of Skaara’s friends is killed in the final confrontation, we see that the boy as finally come to understand the cost and danger of warfare.

But even so, the last big scene between Skaara and O'Neil is contextually bizarre. For the second time, the boys have fought and won a battle, and at the end of it, Skaara and his friends salute O'Neil - a gesture they’ve witnessed and copied from his soldiers - and O'Neil, of course, returns it, because after all, they’ve just helped save the day. But it’s also a scene that’s meant to cement their friendship and respect for one another - a way for Skaara to prove himself as a warrior, and for O'Neil to accept that he cares for the boy. Essentially, then, O'Neil’s emotional catharsis about the shooting death of his son rests on his acceptance of another boy - Skaara - being able to use a gun. Which is… weird. Like, fucked-up weird. It doesn’t work. Or at least, it does on the level of their friendship, because the rest of their interactions have been genuine, but not if you stop and think about what the martial side of it actually implies: that O'Neil’s son died because he didn’t know how to use a gun properly, which is made all better when Skaara proves his ability to fire one in battle and survive.

There are other problems with the film - including, alas, the suspected inclusion of the Black Dude Dies First trope, plus the fact that it fails the Bechdel test - but all that aside, it’s still one of my favourite SF films of all time. I must have been eight or nine at absolute most when I first saw it, and when you fall in love with a story that young, there’s precious little your adult brain can do to overrule it. But even after so many years and the acknowledgement of its failings, it’s nice to look back and realise that there’s still a lot of stuff it gets right. And you know what? As curious as I am now to watch the Stargate TV series, a part of me is still content to let the film stand as it is: alone and unspoiled.

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