1969

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S2 (1969)

What great fun the cast must have had making this! I hesitate to say it, when it's such a lighthearted episode, but it's the best of the season so far. I expected a rather dry, technical episode about finding the Stargate (it was very likely to be a time travel story with that title), but it turned out to be full of joy, meeting old characters in their prime or coming to the end of their lives - the actor playing a young Lieutenant Hammond did a great vocal impression, and SG-1 even got to do a tiny bit of future-gazing by meeting Cassandra as an old woman. But does that mean she'll really live to be that age, and that they will really have a great future of adventuring, and are they all dead by that time, and...

As usual, time travel creates all kinds of weird thoughts and complications, but the main thing was that they enjoyed it, dressing in 60s clothes, driving around America - the production team must have had great fun with the camper van! 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars' references get thrown in there by Jack pretending his name is James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, and then Luke Skywalker. But surely their captor would have known about Kirk, as the Original Series would only just have finished its three-year run on American TV? Maybe he wasn't a fan of sci-fi, and it was clear he didn't believe him anyway.

Amid the montages of driving along, getting suitable period clothes and Daniel getting to play accents and languages with a younger version of Catherine, there's even time for a little poignancy as the hippy dude that lets them ride along is trying to decide whether to go into the army, since he's been drafted, or run away. And the superb central point of the note General Hammond gives Carter is pleasingly vague at first until you see the genius. Great craftmanship there. I half expected the hippy to turn out to be Sergeant Siler, or someone they knew, but that wouldn't add up I don't think. But any episode that has me grinning happily through most of it deserves its place as the season's finest.

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