A trip beyond the stars, through the Stargate

A few weeks ago I started watching Stargate SG-1 on hulu. I have been interested in seeing the show for a while, but I wanted to start from the beginning to get a full understanding of the action and development.

If you are not familiar with hulu, it is a website hulu.com that has TV shows and a few movies on it to watch for free. It is fully legal and has a few commercials during the content. Some networks will agree to have the last 5 episodes that aired on TV of their popular shows available for viewing. It also has some older shows, like Stargate SG-1 and even Rocky and Bullwinkle (which I recommend).

I am almost finished with the third season of Stargate SG-1 and enjoying it a lot. Here is the basic premise of the show:

People dug up a big circle in Egypt that is a piece of alien technology (the stargate) that allows nearly instantaneous travel from one gate to another. These gates are located on planets across the galaxy. The mythology of ancient Egypt and other societies developed around travelers from an alien race that used the gate. While the original purpose of the gate system and the race who built them are a mystery, it seems one of their purposes was to transport different human cultures to different planets. The show takes place in the present day, or at least the present day starting in 1997 when it was made. One of the four person teams that goes through the gate to explore other planets and make contact with people is codenamed SG-1 as in Stargate team 1. The show develops from the people and situations SG-1 encounters.

I would recommend watching the movie Stargate beforehand. The show picks up where the movie left off and references the events of the movie. Also, the first episode of SG-1 is not currently available online. I saw the movie with my Associate a few years ago and from that I had enough of a basis to understand things immediately. While watching all the episodes in order is not absolutely necessary to follow the storyline, the show is more linear in its development than Star Trek, where all the episodes of a series could be seen in a random order and still make sense.

Watching has inspired me to pick up my books on ancient Egypt and start reading them again. Ancient Egyptian gods like Apophis and places like Abydos are incorporated into the story. They even have a burial in season 3 episode 10 that is complete with the weighing of the heart against a feather and negative confession of the deceased.