Inauguration

DVD, Stargate SG-1 S7 (Inauguration)

It started so well, with an inside view on, well, the inauguration of a new President (spoiler alert in the title!), and more specifically, the revelation to him of the Stargate Programme, not to mention aliens, hostile ones at that, and teams of people out in the galaxy helping to keep Earth safe. As he says himself, the people elected him to govern the country, not the whole galaxy, and if not for the guy's innate sense of humour and down-to-earth attitude, he might have been overwhelmed by the information provided by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It's fun and different, and turns into a political drama that also happens to be set in the 'Stargate' universe, or at least that little backdoor we commonly call Earth. I'll bet any time a President of the United States is made part of a story the Americans love it, in a way that we mere Britons, who wouldn't be all that bothered about the Prime Minister's appearance in a drama, couldn't understand. Saying that, we all know what power is, and it's commonly accepted that the Prez is the most powerful individual in the world (for the moment…), so even if you don't come to it from that, it is fascinating to see that figure made aware of the sci-fi details we know so well, and makes great 'what if?' TV - one of my favourite films is 'Air Force One' in which a fictional US President is solely responsible for saving his hijacked plane! As I said, he's a good character, with a sense of humour, so it's easy to warm to him. It also makes a difference that, I believe, we'd never before seen the President of the previous administration, so to get such a fresh and engaging introduction was certainly different.

And if the whole episode continued that theme it could have been a good one, but while I didn't dislike the story as I did on first viewing, it was an inescapable fact that this was, or was going to be, a clips show. And there was me thinking we'd moved beyond those hated wastes of space - indeed, it was actually a second before I saw the 'Excerpts by' coming up on screen that it twigged that this had the potential to be one of the dreaded clips episodes… and then it was. But I think that does it a disservice, because without that warning at the beginning, I might not have felt quite as negative about it, since there aren't that many clips and they were generally short. If anything, the episode feels more like a primer to prepare us and bring us up to speed ready for the start of the spinoff series, 'Stargate Atlantis,' and what I assume will be the grand discovery of the Lost City of The Ancients in the final episodes of the season. So from that perspective it makes sense to remind us of key events or interrelationships of the cast (the question of an inappropriate relationship between Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter is spoken about for perhaps the first time outside of the main characters), what they fear, what they've done, weak points, faults, successes, that kind of thing, while also referencing The Ancients and the basic information that got us to this point. It also helps that the episode is populated with some good characters… and Kinsey.

Now Vice President, his own evil ways have come back to bite him - if he'd only played his nefarious secret power struggles in the background as he always used to, instead of showing his hand (or his cold, dead eyes), to the President, and the innuendo around him came to light, he might well have kept the new President in the dark about his intentions and motives. Instead, thanks to a surprising man of conscience, his real face is exposed. Something tells me this equitable, reasonable, but shrewd President would have seen through him at some point, but it seems, thanks to Woolsey, it wasn't before he realised the value of SG-1 and Hammond. I must say, though, that the other SG teams don't come off very favourably. I know SG-1 are considered the best, having the all-important connections to the outside galaxy (through Sam with her Father and the Tok'ra, through Teal'c with Bra'tak and the Jaffa, through Daniel with The Ancients themselves, and through O'Neill and the Asgard), but no other team is even mentioned, neither for positives or negatives! If they wanted this series to spread and become a wider franchise in the style of 'Star Trek,' they could have done a better job of making them seem part of a larger organisation, not the sole important members: it makes it seem like if we lost SG-1 we'd lose everything! But that wasn't Woolsey's contention while he was working under Kinsey - he felt that too many mistakes had taken place, but he didn't suggest the obvious, which is that it wouldn't have made any difference if it had been other humans who'd been in SG-1's shoes, as most of the time it was human vulnerability, not personal judgement.

It's a credit to Woolsey that we see him realise just what Kinsey's about, and this motivates him to speak out, Picardo excellent at being a man of principle who feels he must stand up. He doesn't accept SG-1's faults, but he also recognises the damage Kinsey's capable of, a man who truly believes in his country and in doing things honourably and correctly. When he meets the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs you can tell he wants to hand it off to this man of authority, but after opposing him (and the guy certainly had plenty of good points in support of Hammond and the team in opposition to Woolsey's cherry-picked rundown of their failures), he remains cold, and the burden remains on Woolsey. But, being a man of integrity he takes it on the chin and continues his course, going so far as to present the President with the floppy disk upon which evidence of Kinsey's crimes lies. The only question left for the President to ponder is: 'where can I find a floppy disk drive now?' Actually, he seems pretty pro-SGC, rather like the previous incumbent, but he doesn't know if he'll be able to protect them. This may be setting things up for George Hammond's departure, as I seem to remember him leaving at the end of this season, which will be sad, but seven years is a great run.

If it weren't for Hammond appearing in this episode, the entire thing would have happened without a contemporary appearance by one of the main characters (not counting the clips, obviously), and when you consider that the episode isn't boring, this is a compliment to the characters that do carry it. So were the cast just told to take the week off? It always seems strange to me that they would bother to make a clips episode at all, as in some ways you might just as well cut an episode from the schedule as pad one out with extracts of previous. But as I said, I can see some reasoning for a refresher before the expansion of the franchise into new territory, even if I can't imagine this being the best way for a new viewer to have gotten into the universe - they were preaching to the converted, really, but it's useful for the converted to remind themselves of the facts, after all, so while the pall of the clips show monicker hovers over the episode, it comes through as at least an interesting one, if not an enthralling one. The biggest irony I felt was in seeing the first clip was a clip from a previous clips show! You can't get more meta than that.

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