Spoilers come out of the Stargate too!
Welcome back to the seemingly-eternal world of the Stargate. Where demigods, soul-eating monsters, irreversible time travel and all other manner of strange inexplicable things and events, and hapless human collide!
I adored the original film, ‘Stargate’, and dutifully watched every single last incarnation of the spawned television shows that came after it. ‘Stargate SG1’, and their wars with the Goa’uld, the Asgard and of course the Orii, is still arguably the best, and the longest running, at ten freaking seasons long. Then came ‘Stargate Atlantis’, and while I always love me some Jason Momoa, the show began to decline in popularity. The wraithly bad guys in Atlantis looked spiffy, at least I thought they did, but albino goth cyberpunk just after eating your soul somehow got old. Then came the modern atrocity that was ‘Stargate Universe’, that attempted all sorts of newfangled camera tricks that worked plenty for other newer shows, but somehow just managed to upset many of the original Stargate fans. Those fans, and yes me too, had been patiently waiting for another Stargate show for some time, and as much as we applauded the addition of the nerd just-like-us in the main crew in the form of Eli Wallace, the best thing that that show had going for it was the Smith-like Dr. Rush, as played by Rumplestiltskin actor Robert Carlyle. The show was sadly even less popular than Atlantis, and it didn’t help that how they ended Universe upset a lot of the fans left, it was a bit of a bloodbath. So it’s not an exaggeration to say that ‘Stargate Origins’ has the entire world of Stargate, quite literally, on its shoulders, and this new Stargate has everything to live up to.
What do we know, immediately? Catherine Langford, age 22 or so, single, is helping her archaeologist professor father Paul (Connor Trinneer) with his latest obsession, this round metallic object with all sorts of strange keys on it he found out in the Giza desert. Because of course he did. Both Catherine (Ellie Gall) and her father would be happy to while away translating runes and what they mean on the round metallic thing, but there’s no time for that, because the Nazis have just turned up, complete with a freaking camera crew, insisting that the metal ring is now theirs and they’re going to open it and go through!
Thus does Cat’s Dad and a Nazi crew, led by the misguided Dr. Wilhelm Brucke (Aylam Orian), disappear into the stargate, and Cat is left behind to call in help and, what else, open the stargate and go after them all! Her friends Captain James Beal (Philip Alexander) and Wasif (Shvan Aladdin) are highly reluctant at this idea, but Catherine is all kinds of insistent, and with all sorts of nods to the premiere movie to follow in this timeline, the original ‘Stargate’, they step-stumble through the gate too.
Okay, we’re just going to have to come out and say it, the sets for the Goa’uld Aset’s palace, are lousy. The hanging candles just get in the performers’ way, the backgrounds are so sadly simple, and everything seems rather childish in comparison to even SG1 standards. The effort made for costumes and makeup, on the other hand, at least looks fairly elaborate, mostly for our two mains, Aset (Salome Azizi) and Serqet (Michelle Jubilee Gonzalez).
So Aset was apparently given domain over this little slice of heaven by Ra himself, as we learn the lore, but somehow they had a falling out and she’s not exactly in favor at the moment. Especially since she bears a potential Harcesis child, and yes I’ll helpfully spoil that for you, it means the forbidden human child of two Goa’uld hosts. So Aset needs more slaves to rise in rebellion against Ra, and of course a certain Nazi is quite happy to help with that, provided Aset helps him with a large portion of Naquadah, that explosive mineral the stargate is made from, that would make him overlord of, hell, Earth itself. Your typical Nazi, Bruck is, all that power and your first thought is all the destruction you’re gonna rain over everyone who ever told you ‘no’ or ‘grow up’.
The Professor has been given the dubious privilege of serving as translator for Aset and her people to the would-be Nazi overlords, but of course Cat can do more or less the same thing, so when they get separated and Cat’s group heads off to meet the local slave population, everyone’s not completely screwed. Not yet. With the help of their new native pal Kasuf (Daniel Rashid), Cat and Beal and Wasif find the always-missing last symbol for the stargate and plan on coming back to Earth, but hey, not before yet more confrontations with Nazis and Goa’ulds!
Note that I mention more than one Goa’uld Godly type for the ending confrontation of the show, which sadly I thought was unnecessary, but whatever. The whole show suffers from overeager problems, issues of trying to cash in on whatever’s left of the Stargate fandom – Catherine sports this odd accent that comes and goes, the whole thing feels more like an attempt at an Indiana Jones adventure complete with Nazis but shoehorned into the Stargate-verse, and attempting to make a prequel show to the original film instead of continuing shows for after the movies is clearly just a desperate cash and popularity grab.
Even the manner in which the show is offered to the audience, is flawed. Each mini-episode is approximately ten minutes long, and there are ten episodes, so put all together it makes a kind of fan-made mini-movie. The only way currently to see the show is to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 on MGM’s Stargate Command website, but this gives one access to all the other Stargate franchise movies, television series, and other ‘Members Only’ exclusive content, so there’s that.
Explore the beginnings of the stargate world with Stargate Origins now!